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WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 
THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 



BY 
JOHN ALFRED FAULKNER 

Professor of Church History in 
Drew Theological Seminary 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK : : CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1918, by 
JOHN ALFRED FAULKNER 



OCT i / i o » o 
©0U5O3874 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Wesley as Sociologist 7 

II. Wesley as Theologian 36 

III. Wesley as Churchman 85 

Appendixes 

I. The Erasmus-Wesley Ordination 

Story 141 

II. Letter on the "Separation" of the 
Methodists from the Church of 
England 145 

III. The Rev. Arthur W. Little on Coke's 

Ordination 150 

Index 171 



WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

How can we help but be drawn out to that 
little, restless man of the eighteenth century, 
with his noble enthusiasms, his practical temper, 
his cool head, his sane and wise methods, who 
combined as few other men have ever done 
devotion to the largeness of God's truth as he 
saw it with ethical passion, and so comes 
before us in the unique role of both a religious 
and theological, and moral, reformer? A social 
reformer in the same sense he was not. It is 
rather only indirectly, as the outcome of his 
zeal for Christian faith and life, that he appears 
in these sociological relations, or as inheriting 
the love of order of his ancestors that he comes 
out with his conservative views of politics and 
thus actually exercised a steadying influence 
upon public life. 

I do not find that Wesley brought forward any 
new views of society or of political economy, or 
that he had thought out what Christianity really 
demands, if radically carried out, in the recon- 
struction of human relations. He took the 

7 



8 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

world as he found it, he worked with such laws 
and institutions as were in vogue; he did not 
disown the right of private property, the right 
of accumulation, the right of monarchy, the 
right of Parliament to tax colonies in return for 
the undeniable blessings — as he considered them 
— of British protection. On all such questions 
he stood for the status quo. His work was not 
to change laws or institutions, but to change 
men. The French Revolution began May 25, 
1789, with the meeting of the National Assem- 
bly. On July 12 of that year an insurrec- 
tion broke out in Paris, and the first blood was 
shed, and two days later the people stormed the 
Bastille. On August 4 feudal and manorial 
rights were abrogated by the Assembly, and a 
solemn declaration of the equality of human 
rights was made. But that annus mirabilis, 
1789, goes by without a word by Wesley in his 
Journal. I wonder what he thought of that 
and of the events of 1790. 

In 1789 he was eighty-six, but still bright, 
active, preaching every day as usual, and in- 
terested in affairs, as his reading the king of 
Sweden's book on The Balance of Power in 
Europe shows. He refers to Rousseau three or 
four times in his Journal, but never to his 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 9 

political or social views. In his sermon, "The 
Work of God in North America" (printed in 
1778), he gives a kind of philosophy of American 
history. He says the colonies became wealthy 
on account of their immense trade. With 
wealth came pride, then luxury. "We are apt 
to imagine nothing can exceed the luxurious 
living which now prevails in Great Britain and 
Ireland. But alas! what is this to that which 
lately prevailed in Philadelphia and other parts 
of North America? A merchant or middling 
tradesman there kept a table equal to that of a 
nobleman in England, entertaining his guests 
with ten, twelve, yea, sometimes twenty dishes 
of meat at a meal! And this was so far from 
being blamed by anyone that it was applauded 
as generosity and hospitality." Then came 
idleness, then lust, where he quotes Ovid's 
lines in Latin: 

"It is asked, why has ^Egisthus become an 
adulterer? 

"The cause is clear; he was lazy." 
These were the reasons why the work of God 
declined in America. Then came the Revo- 
lution, due to the desire for independence, 
which brought on poverty again, which was 
the nurse of virtue. He closes his sermon as 



10 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

follows: "From these we learn that spiritual 
blessings are what God principally intends in all 
those severe dispensations. He intends they 
should all work together for the destruction of 
Satan's kingdom, the promotion of the kingdom 
of his dear Son; that they should all minister to 
the general spread of righteousness and peace 
and joy in the Holy Ghost. But after the in- 
habitants of these provinces are brought again 
to 'seek the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness/ there can be no doubt that all other 
things, all temporal blessings, will be added unto 
them. He will send through all the happy land, 
with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, 
not independency (which would be no blessing, 
but an heavy curse, both to them and to their 
children), but liberty, real, legal liberty; a 
liberty from oppression of every kind, from 
illegal violence; a liberty to enjoy their lives, 
their purses, and their property; in a word a 
liberty to be governed in all things by the laws 
of their country. They will again enjoy true 
British liberty, such as they enjoyed before their 
first settlement in America, neither less nor 
more than is enjoyed by the inhabitants of their 
mother country. If their mother country had 
ever desired to deprive them of this, she might 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 11 

have done it long ago, and that this was never 
done is a demonstration that it was never in- 
tended. But God permitted this strange dread 
of imaginary evils to spread over all the people 
that he might have mercy upon all, that he 
might do good to all, by saving them from the 
bondage of sin, and bringing them into the 
glorious liberty of the children of God." * 

This is a thoroughly characteristic passage 
of Wesley, revealing (1) his belief that riches 
have an inevitable tendency to corrupt; (2) his 
Tory optimism that the ruling powers wish well 
to those governed, and that in the latter's 
independence they have no more liberty than 
they had before; (3) that men have the right to 
full civil liberty; (4) that the chief thing is the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness. 

In the strenuous times of "Wilkes and Lib- 
erty" and of the Junius Papers, Wesley pub- 
lished a tract, Thoughts upon Liberty (1772). 
It is a vigorous defense of civil and religious 
liberty, but with as vigorous assertion that at 
that very moment England was in full possession 
of both. He denounces the persecution of the 
Puritans by the Anglicans, of the Presbyter- 
ians in Scotland by the same, scorches the 

1 Works, London ed., 14 vols., vol. vii, pp. 413, 418-419. 



12 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Act of Uniformity and the Conventicle Act, by 
which act his grandfather and great-grandfather 
were dispossessed, and writes in splendid tone 
of protest against all oppression. But with all 
this, the pamphlet is thoroughly Tory. The 
king is the fountain and guardian of English 
liberty, to speak against him is almost a crime. 
A man who publishes lies against the king ought 
to be punished. "We enjoy at this day 
throughout these kingdoms such liberty, civil 
and religious, as no other kingdom or common- 
wealth in Europe, or in the world, enjoys; and 
such as our ancestors never enjoyed from the 
Conquest to the Revolution. Let us be thankful 
for it to God and the king" (vol. xi, pp. 34-46). 
No Wilkes or Junius for Wesley. 

He has a pungent pamphlet Thoughts Con- 
cerning the Origin of Power (no date, but 1772). 
Its purpose is to answer the question, old as 
Aristotle, From whom is political power ulti- 
mately derived? and its method is a reductio ad 
absurdum of the claim that that source is the 
people. It shows the utter lack of sycophancy 
or of itch for popularity on the part of Wesley 
that he should have pounced upon this thesis so 
popular in his later days. He says himself that 
the opinion that power comes ultimately from 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 13 

the people "is now generally espoused by men 
of understanding and education; and that (if 
I do not mistake) not in England alone, but 
almost in every civilized nation." Wesley asks: 
Who are the people? And here he turns the 
argument of the opponent against himself. 
Women are excluded, and men under twenty- 
one, and yet you say power comes from the 
people. "But they have not the wisdom or ex- 
perience necessary to choose their governors." 
Who has? One in a hundred? But you have 
already put the matter on the basis of hu- 
manity. Consistently with your premises you 
cannot exclude women or minors. Even after 
this you are inconsistent, for you exclude in 
England all men who are not freeholders or 
have not forty shillings a year, — a most unjust 
discrimination. If power descends from the 
people, the poor man has just as good a right 
to vote as the rich man. Then, historically 
your thesis is vain. When have the people 
ever chosen a ruler in England? Did they 
choose William the Conqueror? Henry IV? 
Wesley passes in review all the crises in the 
change of rulers in England, and shows that in 
no case did the people have the determining 
voice. Even for William III the consent of the 



14 



WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 



people was neither asked nor obtained. Wes- 
ley says the only case he remembers where the 
people — that is, all or nearly all the people — 
conferred power was that of the raising of 
Masaniello (Tommaso Aniello) to supreme con- 
trol of affairs in Naples in July, 1647 — cer- 
tainly (Wesley might have added) an ill-fated 
venture. "I apprehend/ 5 says Wesley, with 
sarcastic naivete, "that no one desires that the 
people should take the same steps in London." 

From the principle that no one has the power 
to take life but God, Wesley argues that all 
power must descend from God alone. "The 
supposition, then, that the people are the 
origin of power is in every way indefensible. 
It is absolutely overturned by the very principle 
on which it is supposed to stand, namely, that 
the right of choosing his governors belongs to 
every partaker of human nature. It would 
then belong to all. But no one did ever main- 
tain this, nor probably ever will. Therefore 
this boasted principle falls to the ground, and 
the whole superstructure with it. So common 
sense brings us back to the grand truth, there 
is no power but of God!" (vol. x, pp. 46-53). 

Here Wesley stops. He is simply content to 
refute the popular cry of his day. He does not 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 15 

ask, "Upon whom does power devolve from 
God? How does God govern?" He does not 
put the king or aristocracy in the place of the 
people. He simply shows that the popular 
contention must either go farther or be given up. 

Wesley gets in close touch with economic 
questions in his little treatise, Thoughts on the 
Present Scarcity of Provisions (1773). It is 
written with his accustomed frankness and 
directness, whatever we may say of its judg- 
ments. He first describes the poverty of the 
country and the fearful lengths to which people 
were reduced to get food, and then sets out to 
answer the question, "What is the cause of all 
this?" People are without work. Why? Man- 
ufacturers can find no vent for their goods. 
Why? Food is so dear that people can afford 
to buy nothing else. Why is food so dear? 
Wesley now takes the great staples in order: 

1. Bread corn (that is, wheat and other grains). 
"The grand cause is because such immense 
quantities of corn are continually consumed by 
distilling." From the remark of a London 
distiller Wesley concludes that "nearly half 
of the wheat produced in the kingdom is every 
year consumed, not by so harmless a way as 
throwing it into the sea, but by converting it 



16 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

into deadly poison; poison that naturally 
destroys not only the strength and life, but also 
the morals of our countrymen." The amount 
of duty paid is no sign of the amount consumed, 
because many distillers pay no duty at all, or 
duty on only a part. To the objection that the 
duty brings in a revenue to the king, Wesley 
replies that such revenue is gotten at the cost 
of blood. "O tell it not in Constantinople that 
the English raise the royal revenue by selling 
the flesh and blood of their countrymen." 

2. Why are oats so dear? Because there are 
four times as many horses kept for coaches and 
chaises as were a few years ago. 

3. Beef and mutton. Because many farmers 
who used to breed large quantities of sheep and 
cattle breed none now, but have turned their 
attention to horses. "Such is the demand not 
only for coach and chaise horses, which are 
bought and destroyed in incredible numbers, 
but much more for bred horses which are yearly 
exported by the hundreds, yea, thousands, to 
France." 

4. Pork, poultry and eggs — what is the 
matter here? The monopolizing of farms. 
The land which some years ago was divided 
into ten or twenty farms is now engrossed by 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 17 

one great farmer. The little farmers were con- 
stantly sending their pork, fowls, and eggs to 
market. But the gentlemen farmers do nothing 
of this. 

Generally luxury is a great cause of scarcity. 
The rich consume so much that they leave 
nothing for the poor. 

5. Land. Larger incomes are needed, so 
rents are raised. The farmer must have a 
larger price to pay his rent, and that brings 
land up. 

Then, underneath all, are the enormous taxes, 
which make everything dear. And the taxes 
are high because of the national debt, the bare 
interest of which is now four millions a year. 

Wesley makes two or three suggestions at 
the end. Prohibit all distilling — the great bane 
of the country. Lay a tax of ten pounds on 
every horse exported to France, and a tax of 
five pounds on every gentleman's horse. Let 
no farms of above a hundred pounds a year. 
Repress luxury both by laws and example. 
As to the national debt, discharge half of it, so 
save two millions a year (Wesley does not say 
how), and abolish all useless pensions, especially 
to idle governors of forts and castles (vol. xi, 
pp. 53-59). 



18 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

This is Wesley's contribution to the economic 
question of his time. Well intended, the result 
of shrewd observation and frank facing of 
difficulties, it only touches the surface of a 
condition that needed severer remedies — rem- 
edies that none in England then proposed, and 
few now propose. What was and is the cause 
of the monopolization of land in England and 
other European countries? The institution 
of nobility. Did Wesley propose to abolish 
that? What was the cause of the general 
backward state of the farmers and artisans? 
Popular ignorance. Did Wesley tackle that 
problem? What was the cause of the national 
debt? The barbaric war system of so-called 
Christian nations. There is no word of that 
here. That made necessary the fearful import 
and internal duties and taxes on the necessaries 
of life which kept up in England till the great 
Corn Law Bill of 1846. It is to the credit of 
Wesley that he saw the waste and iniquity of 
the drink business and was the herald of the 
modern temperance agitation, and that he was 
the opponent of luxury of all kinds, but it is 
evident that Wesley was no sociological reformer 
in the present-day sense. He was a hearty 
defender of the main institutions of his country, 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 19 

the king, chief of all, and anything approach- 
ing socialism or radical dealing with land, taxa- 
tion, etc., was never in his thought. 

I spoke of war a moment ago. What was 
Wesley's principle here? He vividly describes 
war's horrors. "Hark! the cannons roar! A 
pitchy cloud covers the face of the sky. Noise, 
confusion, terror, reign over all ! Dying groans 
are on every side" (vol. vii, p. 404), etc. "In 
all the judgments of God, the inhabitants of the 
earth learn righteousness. Famine, plague, 
earthquake — the people see the hand of God. 
But wherever war breaks out God is forgotten" 
(vol. xii, p. 327). He also saw the insanity of 
war. In his Address to the More Serious Part 
of the Inhabitants of Great Britain Respecting 
the Unhappy Contest between Us and Our 
American Brethren" (1776), he sees the folly of 
deciding international questions by arms. The 
armies advance toward each other. What are 
they going to do? To shoot each other through 
the head or heart, to stab and butcher each 
other, hasten (it is to be feared) one another in- 
to everlasting burnings. Why so? What harm 
have they done to one another? Why, none at 
all. Most of them are entire strangers to each 
other. But a matter is in dispute relative to 



20 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

the mode of taxation. So these countrymen, 
children of the same parents, are to murder 
each other with all possible haste to "prove who 
is in the right. Now what an argument is 
this! What a method of proof! What an 
amazing way of deciding controversies!' 5 Wes- 
ley hints at a better way, though his suggestion 
remains only a hint. He laments the "aston- 
ishing want of wisdom" shown in deciding such 
a matter by bloodshed. "Are there no wise 
men among us? None who are able to judge 
between brethren? But brother going to war 
against brother, and that in the very sight of 
the heathen. Surely this is a sore evil amongst 
us. How is wisdom perished from the wise! 
What a flood of folly and madness has broke in 
upon us!" (vol. xi, pp. 122, 123). 

In his book The Doctrine of Original Sin 
(1756), Wesley treats of war as an evidence of 
the depravity of man. He calls war a "horrid 
reproach to the Christian name — yea, to the 
name of man, to all reason and humanity." 
He says the deciding of controversies in this 
way is as unreasonable as it is inhuman. "So 
long as this monster stalks uncontrolled, where 
is reason, virtue, humanity? They are utterly 
excluded!" (vol. ix, pp. 221, 223). Wesley, 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 21 

then, saw the horrible illogicalness of war, its 
utter barbarity. He suggested a remedy in 
impartial arbitration, but he did not go farther, 
His large-mindedness prevented him from fol- 
lowing George Fox in making abstinence from 
arms a test of Christianity, as he believed — as 
appears here and there through his writings — 
that society being what it is, an army is a 
necessary guarantee of good order, and that 
there may be justifiable wars. 

In regard to toleration, Wesley was by both 
inheritance and nature a severe stickler for 
order. Besides, he had to suffer from mobs in 
his own person and in the person of his followers, 
and he believed that the law should keep a firm 
hand on unruly elements, just as he did with 
recalcitrants in his own society. Still, so much 
being said, he allowed to all creeds and classes 
the utmost liberty consistent with order. He 
was a strong believer in Roman Catholic eman- 
cipation so far as religious liberty was concerned, 
but he drew a line at political rights on the 
plea that while we must in no case hurt the 
Catholics, we ought not to put them in a place 
where they could hurt us. So he was in favor 
of an Established Protestant Church, and would 
keep Catholics out of office and without political 



22 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

privileges. In 1891 at the celebration of the 
centennial of the death of Wesley, Catholics 
remembered this, and were by no means gracious 
in their references to him. It must be con- 
fessed that Wesley in this respect was not 
ahead of his age. At the same time it is fair 
to bear in mind that the history of Catholicism 
in France, Spain, Austria, and Italy during 
Wesley's lifetime and for fifty years before, was 
not such as to lead an earnest Protestant to 
liberal sentiments. If Catholics were granted 
the full rights of citizenship, might they not 
outlaw Protestants if they got the power, as 
they were doing on the Continent? That was 
the reasoning which retarded full Catholic 
emancipation till 1829 (vol. x, pp. 161-175) . 2 

In the matter of riches, Wesley took the re- 
ligious point of view. How hardly shall they 
that have riches enter into the kingdom of 
heaven! Whoever sets his heart on earthly 
things so that he forgets the things of the 
Spirit, to that man, whether rich or poor, riches 
were a danger. As to what made a man rich, 
Wesley was very modest in his estimate. "Who- 



2 For full discussion of Wesley's attitude to Catholic tolera- 
tion see Faulkner, in Methodist Review, New York, March, 
1908, pp. 276ff. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 23 

soever has food to eat and raiment to put on, 
with something over, is rich" (vol. vii, p. 356). 
One must give at least a tenth of his income. 
"By whatsoever means thy riches increase . . . 
unless thou givest a full tenth of thy substance 
of thy field and occasional income, thou dost 
undoubtedly set thy heart upon thy gold, and 
it will eat thy flesh as fire." "Do you not 
know, that God intrusted you with that money 
(all above what buys necessaries for your 
families) to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, 
to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; 
and indeed, so far as it will go, to relieve the 
wants of all mankind? How can you, howv 
dare you, defraud your Lord by applying it to 
any other purposes?" Everything, then, above 
absolutely necessary expenses is to be given 
away. "After you have gained (with the cau- 
tions above given) all you can, and saved all you 
can, wanting nothing; spend not one pound, 
one shilling, or one penny, to gratify either the 
desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, or the 
pride of life, or, indeed, for any other end than 
to please and gratify God. Secondly, hoard 
nothing. Lay up no treasures on earth, but 
give all you can, that is, all you have. I defy 
all the men upon earth, yea, all the angels in 



24 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

heaven, to find any other way of extracting 
the poison from riches." That is a hard saying. 
Who can bear it? It is unnecessary to say that 
Wesley practiced what he preached. "O leave 
nothing behind you ! Send all you have before you 
into a better world" (vol. vii, pp. 356, 360-362). 
Wesley believed that the love of riches was 
or would be the curse of Methodism. It was 
caught in a necessary historical sequence that 
destroyed it. This was the way: Religion 
produces frugality and industry. These last 
produce riches. As riches increase so do pride, 
anger, and every evil. So religion perishes. 
Thus it will be with the Methodists. The only 
way to avoid this is for the rich to give all they 
can, everything, in fact, above their necessary 
needs. Wesley revived, therefore, the ideas of 
the early church in regard to riches. He failed 
to see that the same religion which brought 
about frugality and industry, and thus riches, 
could inspire the rich to make a good use of 
their wealth, just as it did Lady Huntingdon. 
Southey makes the objection that Wesley's 
ideas of riches were almost as irrational as 
those of the strict friars and were incompatible 
with the welfare of the world. 3 Taken literally, 

3 Life of Wesley , Curry's ed. (Harpers), vol. ii, pp. 308-309. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 25 

they were. But like Christ's words, they were 
not taken literally by the early Methodists, 
and became less and less so. But the spirit of 
Wesley's ideas was exactly that of Christ and 
the early church. 

In regard to methods of making money, 
Wesley warned the people against hazardous 
or unhealthy occupations, against those which 
cannot be made successful without cheating 
or over-reaching, against overcharging, gaining, 
pawnbroking, etc. "We cannot, consistent 
with brotherly love, sell our goods below market 
price; we cannot study to ruin our neighbor's 
trade to advance our own; much less can we 
entice away or receive any of his servants or 
workmen whom he has need of. None can 
gain by swallowing up his neighbor's substance V 
without gaining the damnation of hell." Here 
was Luther's hatred of monopoly. He was 
specially severe against the liquor trade. "We 
must not sell anything which tends to impair 
health. Such is eminently all the liquid fire 
commonly called drams or spirituous liquors. 
It is true these may have a place in medicine; 
they may be of use in some disorders, though 
this would rarely be occasion for them were it 
not for the unskillfulness of the practitioner. 



26 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Therefore such as prepare and sell them only 
for this end may keep their conscience clear. 
But who are they? Who prepare them only for 
this end? Do you know ten such distillers in 
England? Then excuse these. But all who sell 
them in the common way, to any who will buy, 
are poisoners-general. They murder his maj- 
esty's subjects by wholesale. Neither does 
their eye pity or spare. They drive them to 
hell like sheep. And what is their gain? Is it 
not the blood of these men? Who then would 
envy their large estates and sumptuous palaces? 
A curse is in the midst of them. The curse of 
God cleaves to the stones, the timber, the fur- 
niture of them! The curse of God is in their 
gardens, their walks, their groves; a fire that 
burns to the nethermost hell" (vol. vi, pp. 
128-129), and more to the same effect. 

This was one of the first voices raised in N 
England against the liquor business, and it was 
raised with tremendous effect. With his prac- 
tical instinct, Wesley incorporated his tem- 
perance principles immediately into his socie- 
ties, which were virtually total abstinence 
organizations from the first. 

He also considered that gain gotten from 
taverns, victualling houses, opera houses, play- 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 27 

houses, and "any other places of public fash- 
ionable diversion," as tainted, because they 
minister directly or indirectly to unchastity or 
intemperance (vol. vi, pp. 129, 130). 

Wesley was almost an ascetic in his judg- 
ment of anything like luxury. "Waste no 
money in curiously adorning your houses, in 
superfluous or expensive furniture, in costly 
pictures, painting, gilding, books, in elegant 
rather than useful gardens " (vol. vi, p. 131). 
He was opposed to leaving anything but the 
most modest sum to children. If a child knows 
the value of money and "would put it to 
the true use, 5 ' then a man could leave the 
bulk of his fortune to such a child (vol. 
vi, pp. 132-133). As to the proportion in 
giving: "Do not stint yourself like a Jew to 
this or that proportion. Render unto God not 
a tenth, not a third, not half, but all that is 
God's, be it more or less" (vol. vi, p. 135). 

Slavery was flourishing in Wesley's day. 
But he saw into the matter straight. In his 
Thoughts Upon Slavery (1774) he rejected it 
with abhorrence by every law of natural right, 
of justice and mercy. This pamphlet is a 
thoroughgoing appeal, hitting the nail on the 
head, as he was wont to do in all ethical ques- 



28 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

tions with his clear-eyed conscience. "Give 
liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every 
child of man, to every partaker of human 
nature. Let none serve you but by his own 
act and deed, by his own voluntary choice. 
Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion. 
Be gentle toward all men" (vol. xi, p. 79). 
His pamphlet upon slavery is a fearful indict- 
ment. When the Abolition Committee was 
formed in 1787, Wesley wrote a letter supporting 
it heartily (vol. xiii, p. 153, note), and one of 
his very last letters (February 26, 1791) was 
to a prominent anti-slavery worker — presum- 
ably Wilberforce — praising him for his persever- 
ing activity against "that execrable villainy, 
which is the scandal of religion, of England, 
and of human nature" (p. 153). 

It is true that when Methodism was estab- 
lished in the West Indies, Wesley forbade his 
preachers agitating against slavery, which was 
a regular institution there. In fact, their silence 
was the only condition on which the existence 
of their work was possible. But that did not 
mean that Wesley had changed his mind one 
iota as to the essential injustice and evil of 
slavery and the diabolicalness of the slave 
trade. He retained that attitude to the last. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 29 

But how preachers should proceed to get rid of 
it was another question. 

As to the smaller social or personal virtues, 
Wesley was everywhere insistent. It was a 
dirty England that he found — he left it cleaner. 
He was always insisting upon cleanliness. He 
quotes: 

"Let thy mind's sweetness have its operation 
Upon thy person, clothes, and habitation. 

"Use no tobacco unless prescribed by a 
physician." What have not physicians pre- 
scribed! "It is an uncleanly and unwholesome 
self-indulgence, and the more customary it is 
the more resolutely you should break off from 
every degree of that evil custom." "Use no 
snuff unless prescribed by a physician. I sup- 
pose no other nation in Europe is m such vile 
bondage to this silly, nasty, dirty custom as the 
Irish are. But let Christians be in this bondage 
no longer." "Touch no dram. It is liquid 
fire. It is liquid, though slow, poison." He 
imputes to drink, snuff and smoky cabins the 
"blindness which is so exceedingly common 
throughout the nation" (vol. xii, pp. 250, 251). 
It is an actual fact that in these minor morali- 
ties Wesley upheld an ideal far beyond many 



30 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

of his followers to-day, both in England and 
America. In England it is common for Wes- 
leyan Methodist ministers to smoke and oc- 
casionally to drink, and up to 1880 smoking was 
an ordinary practice with Methodist Episcopal 
ministers. In 1880 a law was passed by the 
General Conference requiring applicants for the 
ministry to pledge abstinence from the weed. 
But in the Church, South, the practice still 
went on. It was not till May, 1914, that the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, went back 
to Wesley's ideal of cleanliness, so far as to 
require clerical postulants to give over the 
filthy habit. It is hardly necessary to say 
that Methodism is far ahead of other churches 
in this. In the Roman Catholic, the Protestant 
Episcopal, the Presbyterian, and the Congrega- 
tional churches, tobacco-using ministers are 
probably the majority of their clergy. 

As to practical social helpfulness, Wesley did 
what he could. What he did you will find in 
any recent "Life" (the old "Lives" do not pay 
much attention to this side of Wesley's activity) 
or in that admirable little book by David D. 
Thompson, sometime editor of the North- 
western Christian Advocate, John Wesley as 
a Social Reformer (New York and Cincinnati, 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 31 

1898). He appointed visitors to the sick, simi- 
lar to our deaconesses. He started the first 
free medical dispensary; he studied medicine 
with enthusiasm and often gave free treatment 
to the poor; he founded a widows' home; he 
started schools for poor children; he devised a 
loan fund, "one hundred and fifty years before 
a similar scheme was begun by philanthropic 
gentlemen in New York," says Thompson 
(p. 22), though not before the Monies Pietatis 
were a well-established institution of Catho- 
licism. A cobbler, Lackington, borrowed in 
1775 five pounds with which to start a second- 
hand book shop in connection with his shoe- 
shop. The book business grew more rapidly 
than the shoe, and developed into one of the 
largest second-hand book stores in England! 

A result of Wesley's movement was the new 
intellectual stimulus given to laboring men. 
They began to read, to speak, to preach, to form 
unions for self-improvement, finally to form 
labor organizations to agitate for better con- 
ditions. It was the opinion of Professor J. 
Thorold Rogers, the eminent political econo- 
mist of Oxford, that agricultural unions could 
not have been formed in England at all but for 
the moral and mental uplift given by the humble 



32 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Methodist preachers. "I do not believe that 
the mass of peasants could have been moved at 
alF' had it not been for these prior Methodist 
organizations. "I have often found that the 
whole character of a country parish has been 
changed for the better by the efforts of these 
rustic missionaries." 4 The local preacher, and 
not the secularist lecturer, says Fairbairn, has 
formed the mind of the miner and the laborer, 
and when the politician addresses the English 
peasantry he has to appeal to more distinctly 
ethical and religious principles than when he 
addresses the upper and middle classes. 
\ Wesley was no socialist. He had no social 
program, except the Pauline one of humble 
obedience to the powers that be. He was not 
a reformer, nor an agitator. He did little more 
than reecho the words which once sounded 
down the Jordan valley: "Repent, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand." But he was 
a wide-minded man, with a broad outlook, who 
took intense interest in everything which 
touched humanity, with ethical passion, with 
enthusiasm not only for saving men but for 

enlarging their lives on all sides. Most of the 

■ it 

4 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, London, 1884, 6th ed., 
1901, p. 516. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 33 

wrongs of the day he struck with burning words; 
others he condemned unconsciously. His great 
work was to make men the sons of God in truth. 
That work went wide and deep into the English 
race. So it brought it about — or at least it was 
one of the chief factors in bringing it about — 
that social, economic, and political reform in 
England was to go forward in peaceable chan- 
nels, not by way of cataclysm, as in France 
then and in Russia now, but by way of quiet 
but inevitable evolution, as in all English- 
speaking lands. This result of that mighty 
movement of which Wesley was, after all, only 
one of many movers, has been so w^ell expressed 
by Lecky that I quote his words, and with 
them close the subject: 

Great as was the importance of the evangelical revival 
in stimulating these [philanthropic] efforts, it had other 
consequences of perhaps wider and more enduring in- 
fluence. Before the close of the century in which it 
appeared, a spirit had begun to circulate in Europe 
threatening the very foundations of society and of belief. 
The revolt against the supernatural theory of Chris- 
tianity which had been conducted by Voltaire and the 
encyclopaedists; the material conception of man and of 
the universe, which sprang from the increased study of 
physical science and from the metaphysics of Condillac 
and Helvetius; the wild social dreams which Rousseau 



34 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

had clothed in such transcendent eloquence; the misery 
of a high-spirited people ground to the dust by unneces- 
sary wars and by partial and unjust taxation; the im- 
becility and corruption of rulers and priests, had together 
produced in France a revolutionery spirit which in its 
intensity and in its proselytizing fervor was unequaled 
since the days of the Reformation. It was soon felt in 
many lands. Millions of fierce and ardent natures were 
intoxicated by dreams of an impossible equality and of 
complete social and political reorganization. Many old 
abuses perished, but a tone of thought and feeling was 
introduced into European life which could only lead to 
anarchy and at length to despotism, and was beyond all 
others fatal to that measured and ordered freedom which 
can alone endure. Its chief characteristics were a hatred 
of all constituted authority, an insatiable appetite for 
change, a habit of regarding rebellion as the normal as 
well as the noblest form of political self-sacrifice, a disdain 
for all compromise, a contempt for all tradition, a desire 
to level all ranks and subvert all establishments, a de- 
termination to seek progress, not by the slow and cautious 
amelioration of existing institutions, but by sudden, vio- 
lent, revolutionary changes. Religion, property, civil au- 
thority, and domestic life were all assailed, and doctrines 
incompatible with the very existence of government were 
embraced by multitudes with the fervor of a religion. 
England on the whole escaped the contagion. Many 
causes conspired to save her, but among them the prom- 
inent place must, I believe, be given to the new and 
vehement religious enthusiasm which was at the very 
time passing through the middle and lower classes of the 
people, which had enlisted in the service a large propor- 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 35 

tion of the wilder and more impetuous reformers, and 
which recoiled with horror from the anti-Christian tenets 
that were associated with the Revolution in France — (A 
History of England in the 18th Century. Am. ed., New 
York, 1883, vol. ii, pp. 691, 692). 



36 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

II 
WESLEY AS THEOLOGIAN 

The catholicity and liberality of Wesley and 
early Methodism has long been our boast. 1 
Let me give one or two quotations among 
several : 

One circumstance more [says Wesley] is quite peculiar 
to the people called Methodists — that is the terms upon 
which any person may be admitted to their society. They 
do not impose in order to their admission any opinions 
whatever. Let them hold particular or general redemp- 
tion, absolute or conditional decrees; let them be Church- 
men or Dissenters, Presbyterians or Independents — it is 
no obstacle. The Presbyterian may be a Presbyterian 
still; the Independent or Anabaptist may use his own 
mode of worship; so may the Quaker, and none will 
contend with him about it. They think and let think. 
One condition and one only is required — a real desire to 
save the soul. Where this is, it is enough; they desire no 
more; they lay stress upon nothing else; they ask only, 
Is thy heart therein as my heart? If it be give me thy 
hand. 2 



1 See, for instance, in Stevens's History of the Religious 
Movement in the Eighteenth Century Called Methodism, vol. i, 
pp. 30, 31, and my article on "Certain Aspects of Early Meth- 
odism" in Southern Methodist Review, November, 1887, 179ff. 

2 Works, London ed., 14 vols., vol. xiii, p. 266. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 37 

After saying that Methodists lay chief stress 
on the sum of the gospel, love of God and our 
neighbor, he proceeds : 

The Methodists are in no wise bigoted to opinions. 
They do, indeed, hold right opinions, but they are pecul- 
iarly cautious not to rest the weight of Christianity there. 
They have no such overgrown fondness for any opinions 
as to think that these alone will make them Christians, 
or to confine their affection and esteem to those who 
agree with them therein. There is nothing they are more 
fearful of than this, lest it should steal upon them un- 
awares. They contend for nothing trifling as if it were 
important; for nothing indifferent as if it were necessary; 
for nothing circumstantial as if it were essential to Chris- 
tianity; but for everything in its own order. 3 

In his famous tract on The Character of a 
Methodist: 

The distinguishing marks of a Methodist are not his 
opinions of any sort. His assenting to this or that scheme 
of religion, his embracing any particular set of notions, his 
espousing the judgment of one man or of another, are all 
quite wide of the point. Whosoever, therefore, imagines 
that a Methodist is a man of such or such an opinion, is 
grossly ignorant of the whole affair; he mistakes the truth 
totally. We believe, indeed, that "all scripture is given 
by the inspiration of God" ; and herein we are distinguished 
from Jews, Turks, and Infidels. We believe the written 
Word of God to be the only and sufficient rule both of 
Christian faith and practice; and herein we are fundamen- 

3 Ibid., vol. viii, pp. 206-207. 



38 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

tally distinguished from those of the Romish Church. 
We believe Christ to be the eternal, supreme God; and 
herein we are distinguished from the Socinians and Arians. 
But as to all opinions which do not strike at the root of 
Christianity, we think and let think. So that whatsoever 
they are, whether right or wrong, they are no distinguish- 
ing marks of a Methodist. 4 

It is from such expressions as these that some 
have drawn the conclusion that Wesley was not 
only not a theologian, but had no deep interest 
in doctrinal truth, or in Christianity as truth. 
Of course Wesley was not a theologian in the 
sense of Calvin, Hodge, or William B. Pope; 
but he was a theologian in the sense of being in- 
terested in theological discussions, of being at 
home in them, and of being deeply concerned 
in theological truth. So interested was he that 
all his first Conferences (1744 et seq.) were 
taken up with theological discussions in which 
every man had the right to say his full say* 
And although Wesley dominated the result 
and published in the Minutes only what he 
himself believed, yet his belief was not imposed 
on the preachers except in the sense that no 
worker was to inveigh publicly against the 
doctrinal findings of the Minutes. Later in 

4 Works, London ed., 14 vols., vol. viii, p. 340. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 39 

Wesley's life those Minutes were made a stand- 
ard of doctrine. This shows both Wesley's 
catholicity of spirit and his concern for funda- 
mental Christianity. He was not at all averse 
to reading the stiff books of systematic theolo- 
gians. In his MS. diary recently deciphered 
and published by the Rev. Nehemiah Curnock 
we notice such entries as these: "Read Calvin." 
"Read Bull." "Read Baxter." Anyone who 
has read Wesley's Journal will recall his interest 
in what he considered the pure gospel. "The 
plain, genuine gospel runs and is glorified." 5 
He hears with grief the slander of Bennet that 
he (Wesley) "preached nothing but popery; 
that is, denying justification by faith, and 
making nothing of Christ." 6 He finds space 
to publish in his Journal a letter of Thomas 
Walsh, one of the most saintly and learned of 
his preachers, refuting at length the Arian 
view of Christ and proving his deity. 7 He 
calls his own preaching "the gospel" 8 and he 
identifies the doctrines he preaches with Chris- 
tianity. He writes to the high Arian, the Rev. 
John Taylor, of Norwich (then principal of an 
academy at Warrington) : 

5 Journal, Curnock's Standard ed., vol. iv, p. 141. 

6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., pp. 145-146. 8 Ibid., p. 249. 



40 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Take away the scriptural doctrine of redemption, or 
justification, and that of the new birth, the beginning of 
sanctification, or, which amounts to the same thing, 
explain them as you do, suitably to your doctrine of 
original sin; and what is Christianity better than hea- 
thenism? Wherein (save in rectifying some of our notions) 
has the religion of St. Paul any preeminence over that of 
Socrates or Epictetus! Either I or you mistake the whole 
of Christianity from the beginning to the end. Either 
my scheme or yours is as contrary to the scriptural as the 
Koran is. Is it mine or yours? Yours has gone through 
all England, and made numerous converts. I attack it 
from end to end; let all England judge whether it can be 
defended or not. 9 

In a letter to The Westminster Journal in 
1761 he answers to the charge of being an 
"enthusiast" in these words: 

What do you mean by the term? A believer in Jesus 
Christ? An assertor of his equality with the Father, and 
of the entire Christian revelation? Do you mean one who 
maintains the antiquated doctrines of the new birth and 
just justification by faith? Then I am an enthusiast. 10 

There is an interesting entry March 16, 1764: 

I met several serious clergymen. I have long desired 
that there might be an open, avowed union between all 
who preach those fundamental truths, Original Sin and 
Justification by Faith, producing inward and outward 

9 Journal, Curnock's Standard ed., vol. iv, pp. 327-328. 
10 Ibid., vol. iv, p. 428. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 41 

holiness; but all my endeavors have been hitherto in- 
effectual. God's time is not fully come. 11 

He sent a circular letter proposing a union of 
those who believed in "(1) Original Sin, 
(2) Justification by Faith, (3) Holiness of Heart 
and Life; provided their life [that is, the lives of 
those united] be answerable to their doctrine." 12 
An interesting thing about this program is how 
it smacks of old-fashioned evangelicalism — no 
High Church doctrines, no Broad Church 
evaporations after the fashion of the Presby- 
terian liberal Dr. John Taylor of Norwich, but 
just the old, simple doctrines of original sin, 
justification by faith only, and holiness, held 
by the Evangelicals. The solid orthodoxy of 
Wesley is witnessed to in his advising a student 
in Oxford to read up Bull's Companion for 
Candidates for Holy Orders and Bishop Pearson 
On the Creed, two of the stanchest divines on 
the main doctrines that the Church of England 
ever reared. They are as far away from any- 
thing latitudinarian as the east is from the 
west. I have not the least doubt that Wesley 
would have instantly dismissed from his service 
any preacher who denied original sin, justifica- 
tion by faith, the atonement, the deity of 

11 Ibid., vol. v, p. 47. n Ibid., vol. v, p. 61. 



42 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Christ, etc., that is, any of the fundamental 
articles held by the Protestant churches of his 
day. But that does not mean that he would 
have dismissed any who holding to these yet 
differed from Wesley on points not vital. For 
instance, take Calvinism. Though Wesley ab- 
horred the Calvinist doctrine of decrees with a 
hatred inherited from his father and increased 
by his own studies and work, yet he allowed 
full swing to preachers of that doctrine in his 
societies so long as they were en rapport with 
the general cause. When some one charged 
that some of his best preachers had been thrust 
out because they dissented from him on these 
things, Wesley denied it. "There has not been 
a single instance of this kind. Two or three 
(but far from the best of our preachers) volun- 
tarily left us after they had embraced those 
opinions. But it was of their own mere mo- 
tion. 55 13 Wesley knew how to distinguish be- 
tween opinions which might be held with hearty 
loyalty to the gospel (such as Calvinism) and 
those which undermine the citadel. He goes 
to Warrington, where his old theological op- 
ponent, Dr. John Taylor, had been principal 
of the academy, and where John Seddon was 

13 Journal, Curnock's Standard ed., vol. v, p. 116 (1765). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 43 

at this time influencing town and academy 
toward Unitarianism. "About noon I preached 
in Warrington; I am afraid, not to the taste of 
some of my hearers, as my subject led me to 
speak strongly and explicitly on the Godhead 
of Christ. But that I cannot help, for on this 
I must insist as the foundation of all our hope.' 5 14 
Speakii\g roughly, all Wesley's writings were 
occasional, called out to meet some exigency 
or demand, or some daily impulse. The only 
one that has the formality of a long deliberate 
treatise is his The Doctrine of Original Sin, 
according to Scripture, Reason and Experience, 
of which the preface is dated November 30, 
1756. This, however, has only 162 pages, while 
there are added to it long extracts from other 
writers defending the same side, namely, 44 
pages from Watts's The Ruin and Recovery of 
Human Nature (1740); 37 pages from tracts 
on the same general subject by the Rev. Samuel 
Hebden; and 31 pages from Boston's Fourfold 
State of Man (1720), Wesley dating his addi- 
tion of these in March and August, 1757. 
Wesley's treatise is a reply to The Doctrine of 
Original Sin (1738, many later editions), an able 
work written in fine spirit by Dr. John Taylor, 

14 Ibid., vol. v, pp. 253-254. 



44 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

already mentioned, the high Arian Presby- 
terian pastor of Norwich, the same work which 
called out the celebrated The Great Christian 
Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, by Jonathan 
Edwards, finished in May, 1757 (working on 
it in the wilds of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 
at the same time as Wesley was completing 
his), and published after his premature death 
in 1758. 

The first part of Wesley's treatise is taken 
up with a refutation of the goodness of human 
nature drawn from history, first the past, then 
the present. He quotes from Juvenal and 
other Roman writers to prove that man has 
been fearfully corrupt, and gives various facts 
or incidents in Roman history. As to the 
present, he takes the heathen first, and he 
draws a dark picture of their state. He gives 
interesting facts that he learned from the 
Indians in America. All this part of his work 
is most interesting, something like the descrip- 
tion of a traveler. He then considers the 
Mohammedans. "Why is it that such num- 
bers of Turks and Persians have stabbed one 
another in cold blood? Truly, because they 
differ in the manner of dressing their head." 
The Greek Christians came next, and then the 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 45 

Roman Catholic, and finally the Protestant, 
and in each case there are some frank disclosures 
of depravity, which go to show that man is 
pretty well out of joint. All this part of his 
work (about 43 pages) is something like a 
fascinating treatise in sociology, geography, or 
history, and is an illustration of one of Wesley's 
characteristics as a man, a theologian, and a 
writer, namely, his wonderful intellectual curi- 
osity and respect for facts as he finds them. 
It is as though he said, "What you say against 
the doctrine of depravity is not true, because 
history, travel, etc., show that men have been 
and are depraved." 

Wesley then turns to find out the reason for 
this universal spread of evil. After showing 
that education cannot explain it, because 
education itself has to be explained, he turns 
to the Scriptures, and proves from them that 
the ordinary doctrine of the origin of sin in the 
transgression of our first parents is the true one. 
He does this all the more readily, for Taylor 
built on the Bible just as implicitly as Wesley. 
This part of the argument is taken up with brief 
citations from Taylor and as brief refutations. 
There is no sustained and continued argument, 
as in a systematic theology, but only these 



46 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

clever parryings of Taylor's scriptural exegesis. 
He also gives long quotations from Jennings's 
refutation of Taylor. In passing he praises the 
Westminster Assembly's Larger Catechism: "I 
think it is in the main a very excellent compo- 
sition, which I shall therefore cheerfully en- 
deavor to defend" (p. 261). Wesley does not 
hold that men are condemned here and hereafter 
for Adam's sin alone, but for their own "out- 
ward and inward sins, which through their own 
fault spring from the infection of their nature" 
(p. 286). From this whole thrust-and-parry 
treatise it appears that Wesley stood squarely 
with the ordinary view that all human sin and 
misery sprang from Adam's sin; that children 
were involved in it too and would be lost in case 
they died were it not for Christ's redemption; 
that Adam was the federal head of mankind; 
that God does not create man now except 
through the laws of nature; that the sinful 
acts of men are done through the power of God, 
but the sinful parts or elements of those acts 
are done by man alone; that the evil tempers 
of infants are sinful, etc. Wesley was no new 
theologian or "liberal" on depravity and its 
related doctrines, but stood on the Reformation 
creeds (doctrine of decrees alone excepted). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 47 

He accuses Taylor of "destroying the inward 
kingdom of God, sapping the foundations of 
primitive scriptural Christianity' 5 (p. 432). 
In holding that mere formal Christians will be 
saved he is deceiving them. "So they live and 
die without the knowledge, love, or image of 
God; and die eternally" (p. 433). You must 
get down to the root of the life, and get the 
regenerating work done there. 15 

In logical agility in meeting an opponent by 
following up closely what he says Wesley was 
strong. But there was no large thorough dis- 
cussion of the question itself. 

Wesley nowhere faces the question of the 
inspiration of the Scripture — a question which 
played such a large part in the last half of the 
19th century. In his day it was not a question. 
Even the Arians or "liberals" of the day re- 
ceived its full inspiration, and argued as though 
it were the Word of God. How far it is in- 
spired, its alleged errors of fact, its contradic- 
tions, and all the questions threshed over later, 
were hardly up then. In fact, in 1823, when 
Watson published his Theological Institutes on 
which our fathers were nurtured, he found no 
occasion to go into this subject. The Scriptures* 

15 For this treatise, see Works, vol. ix, p. 191ff. 



48 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

full inspiration was taken as a matter of course, 
and the necessity of a scientific treatment of 
that inspiration never occurred to them. In 
the preface of his Explanatory Notes upon the 
New Testament (1754) Wesley says: "The 
Scripture of the Old and New Testament is a 
most solid and precious system of divine truth. 
Every part thereof is worthy of God; and 
altogether are one entire body, wherein is no 
defect, no excess. It is the fountain of heavenly 
wisdom which they who are able to taste prefer 
to all writings of men, however wise, or learned, 
or holy. God speaks not as man but as God. 
His thoughts are very deep: and thence his 
words are of inexhaustible virtue. And the 
language of his messengers also is exact to the 
highest degree: for the words which were given 
them accurately answered the impression made 
upon their minds. And hence Luther says, 
'Divinity is nothing but a grammar of the 
language of the Holy Ghost 5 " (paragraphs 10, 
12). It is evident that Wesley took their in- 
spiration in the largest sense as practically 
covering both language and content. This 
explains that famous and most characteristic 
passage which occurs in the preface to the first 
volume of his Sermons (no date, but 1747), a 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 49 

passage in which his inmost soul is revealed, 
the very philosophy of his life. 

I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an 
arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and 
returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a 
few moments hence I am no more seen! I drop into an 
unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the 
way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. 
God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this 
end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in 
a book! O give me that book! At any price, give me 
the book of God. I have it: here is knowledge for me. 
Let me be homo unius libri. 16 Here then I am, far from 
the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is 
here. In his presence I open, I read this book: for this 
end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concern- 
ing the meaning of what I read? Does anything appear 
dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of 
lights — Lord, is it not thy word, "If any man lack wisdom 
let him ask of God"? Thou "givest liberally and up- 
braidest not." Thou hast said, "If any man be willing to 
do thy will, he shall know." I am willing to do: let me 
know thy will. I then search after and consider parallel 
passages of Scripture, "comparing spiritual things with 
spiritual." 17 

If any man was ever a Bible Christian, he was 
Wesley, and it was with both historic and spirit- 
ual justification that a branch of his followers 

16 A man of one book. 17 Works, vol. v, p. 34. 



50 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

called themselves, when they organized in 1815, 
"The Bible Christians. " None of the minimiz- 
ing views of inspiration so common nowadays 
— some of them even among Methodists — 
would have found any favor with the founder. 
On the other hand, on critical questions not 
involving the religious value of the Bible, 
Wesley spoke with freedom. On the genealo- 
gies of Christ he says: 

If there were any difficulties in this genealogy [that in 
Matthew], or that given in St. Luke, which could not 
easily be removed, they would rather affect the Jewish 
tables than the credit of the evangelists; for they act 
only as historians setting down these genealogies as they 
stood in those public and allowed records. Therefore 
they were to take them as they found them. Nor was it 
needful that they should correct the mistakes, if there 
were any. For these accounts sufficiently answer the 
end for which they are recited. They unquestionably 
prove the grand point of view, that Jesus was of the fam- 
ily from which the promised seed was to come. 18 

It is as though Wesley said : I don't know nor 
care whether the genealogies are accurate or not. 
I am only interested in affirming the honesty of 
the evangelists in transcribing them, and their 
practical value in relation to Jesus. He also 
freely acknowledges the error in Matt. 27. 9: 

18 Notes on New Testament, 1754, on Matthew 1. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 51 

"The word 'Jeremy/ which was added to the 
text in later copies, and thence received into 
many translations, is evidently a mistake: for 
he who spoke what St. Matthew here cites (or 
rather paraphrases) was not Jeremy, but 
Zechariah." Wesley is mistaken in saying that 
the word "Jeremiah" was added in later copies, 
as it is in the oldest copies; and where it was 
later omitted that was due to the fact that 
the passage was not in Jeremiah. But in spite 
of this Wesley himself omits it. 

This violent dealing with the text is met by his 
moral independence of it. In his treatment of 
predestination, by which he means the doctrine 
that God ordains men to eternal life or death 
irrespective of their faith or life as causes or 
conditions, he says that the Bible simply cannot 
teach such a God as that. "Let it [Scripture] 
mean what it will, it cannot mean that the 
Judge of all the world is unjust. No Scripture 
can mean that God is not love, or that his 
mercy is not over all his works; that is, what- 
ever it prove beside, no scripture can prove 
predestination." \ 9 

It is well known that in sending over a revision 
of the Church of England Prayer Book he not 

19 Works, vol. vii, p. 333 (Sermon 128). 



52 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

only cut it down and revised it, but abridged 
the Psalms and omitted passages which he said 
were not fit for a Christian congregation. 

This corresponds with a general liberality of 
feeling which made Dean Stanley call Wesley 
the father of Broad Churchmen and which 
made a Methodist clergyman write an article, 
"Early Methodism Rationalistic. 5 ' 20 "Every 
wise man will allow others the same liberty of 
thinking which he desires them to allow him; 
and will no more insist on embracing his opinions 
than he would have them insist on his embracing 
theirs. . . . One must follow the dictates of 
his own conscience in simplicity and godly 
sincerity. He must be fully persuaded in his 
own mind, and then act according to the best 
light he has. No one can constrain another, 
and every man must judge for himself, as every 
man must give an account of himself to God." 21 
He put high store by reason. His words scoring 
Luther for depreciating reason are often quoted. 
To him reason is the handmaid of the gospel — 

20 William I. Gill, pastor at Madison, New Jersey, when the 
present writer was a student at Drew — later at Lawrence, 
Massachusetts, and the author of able books. The above 
article appears in The Methodist Review of the Church South, 
January, 1886, pp. 93-107. 

21 Works, vol. v, pp. 495-496 (Sermon 39). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 53 

"that power of apprehending, judging, and 
discoursing, which is no more to be condemned 
in the gross than seeing, hearing or feeling." 22 
The same spirit leads him to strongly condemn 
Calvin in the Servetus case. 23 "I read to-day 
part of the meditations of Marcus Antoninus. 
What a strange heathen! Giving thanks to 
God for all the good things he enjoys, in particu- 
lar for his good inspirations, and for twice 
revealing to him in dreams things whereby he 
was cured of otherwise incurable distempers. 
I make no doubt that this is one of those 
'Many who shall come from the east and the 
west, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac/ 
while nominal Christians are cast out." 24 And 
that tremendous challenge in his Farther 
Appeal to men of Reason and Religion, when 
it was objected to the Methodists that they 
hold opinions "which I [the objector] cannot 
believe are true," and Wesley replies: 

I answer, Believe them true or false; I will not quarrel 
with you about any opinion. Only see that your heart 
be right toward God, that you know and love the Lord 

22 Ibid., vol. i, p. 315 (Journal, June, 1741). 

23 Works, vol. vi, p. 201. On Wesley's judgment of Calvin, 
see Faulkner in Methodist Review, New York, July, 1910, 
pp. 640-642. 

24 Journal, October 11, 1745. 



54 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Jesus Christ; that you love your neighbor, and walk as 
your Master walked; and I desire no more. I am sick of 
opinions. I am weary to bear them. My soul loaths 
this frothy food. Give me solid and substantial religion; 
give me an humble, gentle lover of God and man; a man 
full of mercy and good fruits, without hypocrisy; a man 
laying himself out in the work of faith, the patience of 
hope, the labor of love. Let my soul be with these Chris- 
tians wheresoever they are, and whatsoever opinion they 
are of. 

Then in answer to the objection that peopie 
are brought by Methodists "into several erro- 
neous opinions/ 5 Wesley says: 

It matters not a straw whether they are or no; (I speak 
of such opinions as do not touch the foundation;) it is 
scarce worth while to spend ten words about it. Whether 
they embrace this religious opinion or that is no more 
concern to me than whether they embrace this or that 
system of astronomy. Are they brought to holy tempers 
and holy lives? This is mine, and it should be your 
inquiry; since on this both social and personal happiness 
depend, happiness temporal and eternal. Are they 
brought to the love of God and the love of the neighbor? 
Pure religion undefiled is this. How long will you "darken 
counsel by words without knowledge"? The plain religion 
now propagated is Love. And can you oppose this without 
being an enemy to mankind? 25 

This does not mean at all that he was indif- 



25 Farther Appeal, etc., part 3, iv, par. 10 and 14 {Works, vol. 
viii, pp. 244-246). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 55 

ferent to truth, for which he fought many 
times; but when men were opposing and even 
persecuting the Methodists because they dis- 
liked the opinions of the latter, he said: "Remove 
your emphasis, gentlemen. Ask not what are 
our opinions, but what are our lives? Do we 
make the world better? If so, do not oppose us 
so bitterly." This was also in accordance with 
Wesley's fundamental position that the salva- 
tion of heathens and heretics depended not on 
their opinions but on whether, according to 
their light, they feared God or the gods and 
worked righteousness. But as to Christian 
doctrine, and the necessity of keeping Meth- 
odists true to the essentials of it, Wesley was 
deeply concerned. Even in the sermon on 
"Catholic Spirit" he guards himself carefully: 

From hence we may learn, First, That a catholic spirit 
is not speculative latitudinarianism. It is not an indiffer- 
ence to all opinions: this is the spawn of hell, not the 
offspring of heaven. This unsettledness of thought, this 
being "driven to and fro, and tossed about with every 
wind of doctrine" is a great curse, not a blessing; an 
irreconcilable enemy, not a friend to true Catholicism. 
A man of truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to 
seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning 
the main branches of Christian doctrine. It is true he 
is always ready to hear and weigh whatsoever can be 



56 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

offered against his principles; but as this does not show 
any wavering in his own mind, so neither does it occasion 
any. He does not halt between two opinions, nor vainly 
endeavor to blend them into one. 26 

So also in regard to worship, the catholic spirit 
finds which mode of worship is both "scriptural" 
and "rational/ 5 and "cleaves close thereto/' 
"without rambling hither and thither/' "He 
is fixed in his congregation as well as his prin- 
ciples." 27 

Wesley's reverence for the letter of the 
Old Testament was such that he made God 
the author of earthquakes, and looked upon 
them as punishments for sin. He quotes Job 
9. 5, 6; Psalms 104. 32; 107. 5; Nah. 1. 5, 6 
\o prove that God sends earthquakes, and 
Psalms 18.7; Isa. 13. 11, 13; 24. 1, 18-20; 
Psalms 114. 7 to prove that they are a judgment 
on sin. "Nothing can be more express than 
these Scripture testimonies, which determine 
both the cause and author of this terrible 
calamity. But reason as well as faith doth 
sufficiently assure us it must be the punishment 
of sin, and the effect of that curse which was 
brought upon the earth by the original trans- 
gression. Steadfastness must be no longer 

26 Works, vol. v, pp. 502-503 (Sermon 39). * Ibid. 



THEOLOGIAN. CHURCHMAN 57 

looked for in the world, since innocency is 
banished thence. But we cannot conceive that 
the universe should have been disturbed by 
these furious accidents during the state of 
original righteousness. Wherefore should God's 
anger have armed the elements against his 
faithful subjects?" 28 But Wesley was incon- 
sistent here. The Bible presupposed the Ptole- 
maic astronomy, yet he repudiated it and ac- 
cepted the Copernican. 29 If it had been shown 
to Wesley that earthquakes were entirely the 
result of natural law, he would have modified 
his view that they were sent directly by God 
as a punishment. His amenability to what he 
considered fact or what was proved to be fact, 
was thoroughly characteristic. 

It was this same reverence (see Rom. 8. 
19-23) which led him to his notorious views of 
the final happiness of the whole brute creation. 

It must be remembered that this conception 
of the Bible as the Word of God was a part of 
the legacy of both the Reformation and Puri- 
tanism, was not denied then by the Unitarians, 



28 Works, vol. vii, pp. 387-388 (Sermon 129). 

29 See the evidence in full, over against McGiffert, Protestant 
Thought before Kant, 1911, p. 173, by Faulkner, in Methodist 
Review, New York, November, 1912, pp. 954-956. 



58 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

was engraved on the heart of the English people, 
and was the necessary background of Wesley's 
work. It was because he could appeal to it 
that he succeeded. Historically Methodism is 
unthinkable without it. 

As to the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ 
it is hardly necessary to say that Wesley was 
as solid as Gibraltar. If you will turn to his 
notes on 1 John 5. 6-12, you will see that he 
not only receives the Trinity in the fullest sense, 
but even accepts and defends the famous verse 
7 which all scholars now know and some knew 
then to be spurious: "And there are three that 
bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and 
the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." "They 
are one in essence, in knowledge, in will, and in 
their testimony" (on verse 8). He believes the 
Trinity because revealed, but on the manner 
of the Trinity he believes nothing, because not 
revealed. The passage about all men honoring 
the Son even as they honor the Father (John 
5. 23) he takes as one evidence of the Trinity, 
and he quotes a letter of Socinus to a friend : "I 
do not know what to do with my untoward 
followers. They will not worship Jesus Christ. 
I tell them it is written, 'Let all the angels of 
God worship him. 5 They answer, Tf he is not 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 59 

God, we dare not worship him. For it is writ- 
ten, 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 
and him only shalt thou serve/ " This was 
decisive with Wesley. Not only so; he thought 
that the "knowledge of the Three — One God is 
interwoven with all true Christian faith, with all 
vital religion." He quotes the Marquis de 
Renty: "I bear about with me continually an 
experimental verity, and a plenitude of the 
presence of the ever-blessed Trinity," but adds, 
"I apprehend this is not the experience of 
'babes,' but rather 'fathers in Christ.' " 30 He 
goes so far as to say : 

I know not how anyone can be a Christian believer till 
he "hath . . . the witness in himself"; ... till God the 
Holy Ghost witnesses that God the Father has accepted 
him through the merits of God the Son, and, having this 
witness, he honors the Son and the blessed Spirit even as 
he honors the Father. Not that every Christian believer 
adverts to this; perhaps at first not one in twenty; but if 
you ask any of them a few questions, you will easily find 
it is implied in what he believes. Therefore I do not 
see how it is possible for any to have vital religion who 
denies that these Three are One. And all my hope for 
them is, not that they will be saved during their unbelief; 
(unless on the footing of honest heathens, upon the 
plea of invincible ignorance), but that God, before they 



30 Works, vol. vi, pp. 205. Comp. xiii., 77; xii, 352. 



60 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

go hence, will "bring them to the knowledge of the 
truth." 31 

This does not mean that Wesley held that 
anyone must receive his explanation or phil- 
osophy of the Trinity (though he had no phil- 
osophy of it), but only the fact of it. "I insist 
on no explication at all; no, not even on the 
best I ever saw; I mean that which is given in 
the creed commonly ascribed to Athanasius." 32 
The robustness of Wesley's Trinitarianism is 
evidenced by this tremendous creed, even its 
damnatory clauses. These clauses he first 
scrupled, till he considered that they relate to 
only willful unbelievers, and only to the sub- 
stance of the doctrine, not the philosophical 
illustrations of it. He did not only not insist 
on any theories of the Trinity, but he expressly 
differentiated in this sermon between right 
opinion or orthodoxy and religion. "Persons 
may be truly religious and hold wrong opinions" 
— burning and shining lights, yet Roman 
Catholics or Calvinists. He also distinguished 
between essential and non-essential truths. 
"There are some truths more important than 



31 Works, vol. vi, pp. 204-206 (Sermon 55, on 1 John 5. 7; 
1775, and immediately printed). 

32 The Quicunque Vult, the so called Athanasian Creed. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 61 

others. . . . There are some which it more 
nearly concerns us to know, as having a clear 
connection with vital religion." But among 
these he recognizes the Trinity. He does not, 
however, insist on the word "Trinity" or 
"Person." He uses them himself, because he 
knows of none better, but he does not insist on 
them. "I would only insist on the direct words, 
unexplained, just as they lie in the text: 'There 
are three that bear record in heaven, the 
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and 
these three are one' " (pp. 199-201). 

Over against his doubt as to the salvation of 
Unitarians as expressed in this sermon, his 
words as to Firmin are often alleged. He 
published in Arminian Magazine an Extract 
from the Life of Mr. Thomas Firmin (1786), and 
he put in the following preface: 

I was exceedingly struck, at reading the following Life, 
having long settled it in my mind that the entertaining 
of wrong notions concerning the Trinity was inconsistent 
with real piety. But I cannot argue against matter of 
fact. I dare not deny that Mr. Firmin was a pious man; 
although his notions of the Trinity were quite erroneous. 33 

This oft quoted sentence is most welcome as 
showing a mellowing of Wesley's views as he 

33 Works, vol. xiv, p. 293. 



62 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

grew toward the end, but it does not at all 
justify the use sometimes made of it. My 
learned friend, the Rev. Dr. James Roy, in his 
able book, Catholicity and Methodism: or the 
Relation of John Wesley to Modern Thought 
(Montreal, 1877), a book which burst like a 
bombshell in the camp of the Methodist Church 
in Canada, goes much too far in holding that 
the Firmin passage means that Wesley had 
abandoned the Athanasian creed and its ex- 
planations (pp. 76-78). Nothing of the kind. 
Wesley never abandoned either the one or the 
other. He held to the end to the explanations 
as the best ever offered, as evinced by his 
republication of his sermon in 1788; he only 
repudiated them as compulsory tests of ortho- 
doxy, holding still to the fact of the Trinity as 
a test both of orthodoxy and of salvation. Nor 
does his reference to Firmin as a pious man 
mean that he had abandoned his views or his 
appreciation of them. It merely means that 
since his High Church youth, he had widely 
enlarged his conception of piety. That concep- 
tion had so broadened that it had entirely 
sprung his old limits of interpreting piety by 
opinions or doctrines, instead of interpreting 
piety by life, by fruits, as Christ did. That is 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 63 

all it means. But that growth he had already 
attained in 1775, when he preached the Trinity 
sermon, because in that very sermon he makes 
the distinction later made in the Firmin pas- 
sage; namely, that right opinions do not make 
religion, that people may believe many false 
beliefs and yet be truly religious. As to piety, 
as to doing good, as to casting out devils, 
Wesley was wonderfully catholic — let people 
go ahead and do all the good they could. He 
said he would convict himself of bigotry by 
forbidding "Papists" or Socinians casting out 
devils; in fact, he added, if he "should see a Jew, 
a Deist, or a Turk doing the same, were I to 
forbid him either directly or indirectly, I should 
be no better than a bigot still." 34 As to the 
salvation of all such earnest and pious folk, he 
believed that probably before or at their death 
the true God would be revealed to them. 

As to atonement there was hardly any dif- 
ference of opinion among orthodox Christians 
in Wesley's day. He took the general view for 
granted. What was it? It was the view of 
the Reformation creeds — the penal satisfaction 
theory. The moral influence theory, the gov- 

34 Sermon 38, "A Caution Against Bigotry,'* Works, vol. 
v, p. 491. 



64 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

ernmental theory, or any theory which did 
not guard a real objective propitiation paid to 
God for the sins of man never occurred to 
Wesley. If it had, he would have instantly 
rejected it. He takes the references in Isaiah 
53 as literally fulfilled in Christ. His righteous- 
ness is imputed to us. He represents us and by 
his sacrifice he reconciles God to men so far that 
if they believe they will receive peace. Wesley 
nowhere treats atonement, but he everywhere 
takes for granted the old doctrine. For that 
reason among others, till well along in the 
second half of the nineteenth century there was 
no thought of any variation from that doctrine 
in the Wesleyan Methodist Church in the old 
country or in the Methodist Episcopal Church 
here. I think the first who made a break was 
a professor in Drew Theological Seminary, 
Dr. John Miley, who came there to succeed 
his brother-in-law, Dr. Randolph S. Foster, 
when the latter became a bishop in 1872, and 
who in 1879 published his book on The Atone- 
ment in Christ, which revolutionized Methodist 
opinion in America. As is known, Miley 
repudiated any real necessity for atonement at 
all, so far as God was concerned, reviving the 
view of Socinus. God might have forgiven 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 65 

without atonement had it not been for an on- 
looking universe. But as a ruler of angels and 
men such a gratuitous favor would have dis- 
rupted their sense of justice, reverence, respect. 
And so to keep that, to preserve his place as 
governor, Christ came and gave a real atone- 
ment, or what answered for a real atonement; 
but at the bottom the only necessity was the 
interests of his government. The satisfaction 
of divine justice did not require it (Miley, p. 
156), nor the divine veracity (pp. 158ff.), nor 
judicial rectitude (pp. 162ff.). The necessity is 
a "salutary rectoral influence," governmental 
rectitude (p. 167). I think that was the first 
time a break ever came in the Methodist tradi- 
tion of atonement, the regular Reformation 
view (both Lutherans and Reformed) that 
Christ gave a real objective atonement for sin 
to the divine justice and holiness. I say the 
break was revolutionary, for if there is no 
necessity for redemption in the eternal veraci- 
ties of God's being, is there any in propitiating 
the respect of a witnessing world? If God 
could get round himself, could he not get round 
his poor creatures? If once you throw over- 
board a spiritual atonement having its roots in 
the divine nature, how long will you keep a 



66 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

spectacular atonement having its impulse in 
a reaction from gazing angels, devils and 
men? O yes, 1879 saw a sea-change in Meth- 
odist theology, and Drew Theological Semi- 
nary — the supposed seat of conservatism — did 
it. 

As to justification, Wesley said at the first 
Conference (1744), "To be justified is to be 
pardoned and x:$ceived into God's favor; into 
such a state that if we continue therein, we 
shall be finally saved/ 5 The righteousness of 
Christ is imputed, says Wesley, to those that 
believe and when they believe. Then they are 
forgiven and accepted wholly and only for the 
sake of what Christ hath done and suffered for 
them. Luther could not affirm more strongly 
than Wesley that we are justified by faith only, 
and like Luther he insisted that this faith 
inevitably produced good works. 35 Wesley at 
one time revolted against Luther's Commentary 
on Galatians, 36 but it was because he did not 
understand Luther. And in 1770 he published 
his unfortunate Minute on justification in a 
reaction against the extreme consequences to 
which some carried the sola fides (faith alone), 

35 Works, vol. v, pp. 60ff. (see the whole sermon, no. 5, 53-64). 

36 Ibid., vol. i, pp. 315-316. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 67 

a minute which was naturally though wrongly 
interpreted as a rejection of the evangelical 
basis of Methodism as founded like the Refor- 
mation on justification by faith alone. Some 
of the stanchest and most pious friends of 
Wesley and his movement were scandalized. 
The next year he and his Conference issued an 
explanation, in which they said: 

We have no trust or confidence but in the alone merits 
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for justification or 
salvation either in life, death or the day of judgment. 
And though none is a real Christian believer (and con- 
sequently cannot be saved) who doeth not good works, 
where there is time and opportunity; yet our works have 
no part in meriting or purchasing our justification, from 
first to last, either in whole or in part. (Signed by Wesley 
and 53 preachers.) 

If there was ever a declaration in the true 
spirit of Luther, that was one. In fact, hardly 
anything could show Wesley's separation from 
his High Church days and the gulf between 
him and the Oxford reformers of 1833 than the 
hearty way in which he accepted Christ's and 
Paul's and Luther's doctrine of justification by 
faith alone. That has been a special bete noire 
to all so called Catholics, and for that reason 
Luther has been anathema to them. 



68 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

As to the Church Wesley was also Low 
Church. According to the Scripture, he says, 
a Church of Christ is either a company of two 
or more Christian believers meeting together 
(a family or otherwise), a congregation of 
Christians in a place, or several congregations 
in a town considered collectively, or all the 
congregations on earth, as in Acts 20. 28, where, 
says Wesley, it means "the catholic or universal 
church/ 5 All these are a real Church of Christ. 
Members of it (or them) have one Lord, Christ, 
"whom to obey is their glory and joy;" one 
faith, namely, the faith which says to Christ 
with Thomas, "My Lord and my God," and 
with Paul, "The life I live I live by faith in the 
Son of God"; one baptism, the "outward sign 
of all that inward and spiritual grace which the 
one Lord is continually bestowing upon his 
church," and not in this passage the baptism of 
the Holy Spirit, that being included in the "one 
Spirit." Wherever there are people with this 
character, they belong to the catholic, or uni- 
versal, church. Wesley does not like the defini- 
tion of the nineteenth article of the thirty-nine 
Articles of Religion of the Church of England 
("The visible Church of Christ is a congregation 
of faithful men in which the pure word of God 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 69 

is preached, and the sacraments be duly ad- 
ministered")* because it is too exclusive. He 
says: 

I dare not exclude from the Church catholic all those 
congregations in which any unscriptural doctrines which 
cannot be affirmed to be the pure word of God are some- 
times, yea, frequently preached; neither all those congre- 
gations in which the sacraments are not duly administered. 
Certainly, if these things are so, the Church of Rome is 
not so much as part of the catholic Church, seeing therein 
neither is the pure word of God preached nor the sacra- 
ments duly administered. Whoever they are that have 
one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one God and 
Father of all, I can easily bear with their holding wrong 
opinions, yea, and superstitious modes of worship. Nor 
would I on these accounts scruple to include them within 
the pale of the Catholic Church; neither would I have 
any objection to receive them if they desired it as mem- 
bers of the Church of England. 37 

You will notice that in this Wesley was much 
more liberal than some of his followers, who 
deny the Roman Catholic Church to be a 
branch of the Church of Christ, even than the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, which in the 
strength of that virtual denial refuses to accept 
Roman Catholic orders, but reordains Roman 



37 Works, vol. vi, p. 397. Quotations just before, 392-396 
(Sermon 74). 



70 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Catholic priests. This is all the more illiberal, 
because the validity of Methodist orders in an 
ecclesiastical sense goes back to the validity of 
Roman Catholic orders. The Roman Catholic 
clergy who came over to Protestantism in the 
Reformation were never reordained, but they 
themselves gave orders to the ministers of the 
Church of England, which gave them to 
Methodism. Wesley's tremendous emphasis 
on piety and the life of inner faith in Christ as 
shown in holy living broke entirely the High 
Church view of the church as an ecclesiastical 
corporation founded on the threefold order of 
bishops, presbyters ("priests") and deacons, 
guaranteed by a succession of episcopal ordina- 
tions going back to the apostles. If the Quakers 
had only received baptism, they would have 
come in here on the extreme left, as the Roman 
Catholic and Greek Christians did on the 
extreme right. "Can anything, then, be more 
absurd than for men to cry out, "The Church, 
the Church/ and to pretend to be very zealous 
for it, while they themselves have neither part 
in a lot therein, nor, indeed, know what the 
Church is?" (p. 400). He is referring to Angli- 
cans who oppose his work on ecclesiastical 
grounds and who are themselves not true mem- 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 71 

bers of the church, because not real Christians 
in heart and life. 

I heard in New York a sermon by a Methodist 
clergyman on "The Passing of Hell.' 9 He said 
the old literal hell had gone, the hell that we 
got from Saint Augustine, by him handed 
down to the Middle Ages and thence to the 
Reformation and modern times. Wesley was 
the first to strike it by his doctrine of divine 
Fatherhood, of love, and universal salvation; 
and after Wesley (he said) Charles Kingsley, 
Frederic W. Robertson, Frederic Denison Mau- 
rice, Horace Bushnell, and Henry Ward Beecher 
and D. L. Moody had worked nobly in the same 
direction. The old hell had passed and he was 
glad of it. Let it pass, he cried. That brings 
up Wesley's real views on the Last Things. 
Wesley's high view of Scripture led him to 
interpret almost if not entirely literally the pas- 
sages relating^*) the future. The modern way 
of getting the spiritual or inner kernel of truth 
in the vivid imagery of the East and the sensu- 
ous, startling representations of the other life, 
as well as in the teachings of those and other 
matters by theologians and churches — this 
modern way which we owe mostly, perhaps, to 
Robertson and Maurice, Wesley never dreamed 



72 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

of. He took the Scripture as he found it. 
Only when absolutely necessary did he interpret 
anything as figurative. If one reads Sermon 
15, "The Great Assize" (vol. v, pp. 185ff.) 
published in pamphlet immediately after it was 
preached in 1758, it will be seen how literally 
he takes all these matters. He believes in a 
literal general Judgment with a vengeance. 
The literal end of the world by fire; a literal 
resurrection of one's own body, though changed 
in properties (not in substance); apparently a 
literal "great white throne high exalted above 
the earth;" a literal standing of the dead, small 
and great, before the Judgment seat; a literal 
unveiling of every evil thought, word, and deed 
as well as every good one; a literal sentence 
passed on the righteous and the wicked (a 
sentence which he says, "must remain fixed 
and umovable as the throne of God"); a 
literal going of the one part to glory and of 
the other to hell — nothing is minimized, nothing 
is spiritualized, nothing is volatilized into thin 
air. The whole fearful picture Wesley accepts 
at its face value. The only figurative expres- 
sion he allows is that about the books being 
opened (p. 173). The rest he takes as literally 
true. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 73 

Nor was Wesley at all indisposed to use the 
evangelist's custom of painting hell in colors 
not at all rosy, but in this case, at any rate, 
painting exactly as he believed. 

"The wicked will be cast into the lake of 
fire," he says, "burning with brimstone, origi- 
nally prepared for the devil and his angels, 
where they will gnaw their tongues for anguish 
and pain; they will curse God and look upward. 
There the dogs of hell — pride, malice, revenge, 
rage, horror, despair — continually devour them. 
There they have no rest day or night, but the 
smoke of their torment ascendeth forever and 
ever" (p. 179). 

Those in the "unhappy division of Hades 
will remain there, howling and blaspheming, 
cursing and looking upward till they are cast 
into the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels" (vol. vii, p. 327). "What a 
prison is there [in the world below]! 'Twixt 
upper, nether, and surrounding fire.' And 
what inhabitants! What horrid, fearful shapes, 
emblems of the rage against God and man, the 
envy, fury, despair, fixed within, causing them 
to gnash their teeth at him they so long de- 
spised" (p. 323). All their pleasures are gone. 
There is now "nothing new, but one unvaried 



74 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

scene of horror upon horror. There is no 
music but that of groans and shrieks, of weeping, 
wailing, and gnashing of teeth; of curses and 
blasphemies against God, or cutting reproaches 
of one another" (vol. vi, p. 383). 

He allows a figurative reference in the worm, 
for he says, "The first thing intended by the 
worm that never dieth seems to be a guilty 
conscience, including self condemnation, sorrow, 
remorse, and a sense of the wrath of God" 
(p. 385). All unholy passions, tempers and 
horrors will incessantly gnaw the soul, as the 
vulture did the liver of Tityus (ibid.). 

Then how awful the eternity of it! The 
damned can say, "I am all over pain, and I 
shall be never eased of it. I lie under exquisite 
torment of body and horror of soul, and I shall 
feel it forever" (p. 391). The idea of a purga- 
tory of any kind Wesley expressly repudiated 
(vol. vii, pp. 252, 247, 327; vol. x, pp. 98, 99, etc). 

If therefore anyone thinks that Wesley 
helped the passing of hell, he is mistaken. I 
have quoted only a part of his burning descrip- 
tions, his realistic warnings of the sinners of 
England against the everlasting fire. If you 
will read his sermon "Of Hell" (Sermon 73, 
vol. vi, pp. 381ff.), or "On Eternity" (Sermon 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 75 

54), or his "Dives" sermon (Sermon 112), you 
will soon find out that Wesley was no "liberal" 
on future punishment. 38 So far from helping 
along the passing of the old-fashioned hell, 
there were few men in modern times who did 
more to make it still a living thing and send it 
far into the nineteenth century as one of the 
most undisputed principles of evangelical theol- 
ogy. 

In 1884 I sent to England for a little pam- 
phlet, Conjectures Concerning the Nature of 
Future Happiness, Translated from the French 
of Monsieur Bonnet of Geneva, together with 
Letter and Notes of John Wesley (Manchester: 
Woodhead, 1884, 15 pp.). This was the Letter: 

To the Reader 

Dublin, April 7, 1787. 
I am happy in communicating to men of Sense in this 
Kingdom, and at a very low price, one of the most sensible 
tracts I ever read. John Wesley. 

Bonnet's pamphlet contains curious specula- 
tions about the future life, and among other 
things he anticipates the complete restoration 
of all living beings to the harmony and love of 
God. From this it was thought by some that 

38 Or look under "Hell" in Index to last London ed. of his 
Works. 



76 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Wesley had changed his view about hell. But 
this was a premature conclusion. After 1787 
he published sentiments like those I have 
quoted before, or allowed them to be published. 
Wesley had not changed his view. It was his 
wont to pick up curious and edifying pieces of 
literature and republish them in cheap form, 
and without necessarily indorsing all they con- 
tained. His sending out the tract of Bonnet 
was partly on account of its speculations on 
the future of the brute creation, in which 
Wesley was much interested and in which he 
agreed with him. When I was younger, I laid 
too much stress on this tract, 39 but further 
study of Wesley has corrected me. It does not 
affect at all the strong drift of his stalwart 
orthodoxy on hell. 

The reader who has gone over the above facts 
will not be surprised at Wesley's concern for the 
soundness of his preachers. And this in spite 
of his oft-quoted "Think and let think." In 
general tolerance and catholicity of feeling he 
was (as said above) among the widest-minded 
men of his day who were yet of earnest Chris- 
tian conviction. Though he fought Catholi- 

39 See my article in The Christian Register (Boston, Jan- 
uary 15, 1885). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 77 

cism, Calvinism, and quietist Moravianism, it 
was only in the free forum of discussion, and in- 
volved no persecuting narrowness, as he shows 
in the "Think and let think" phrase. A cer- 
tain bishop was persecuting the Methodists, 40 
and Wesley wrote to him one of his finest letters. 
It begins, "I am a dying man," and is a noble 
plea not to persecute the Methodists or drive 
them out of the church, even if he does not 
agree with them. "You are a man of sense; 
you are a man of learning; nay, I verily believe 
(what is of infinitely more value) you are a man 
of piety. Then think and let think. I pray 
God," 41 etc. The "Think and let think" is a 
plea for tolerance, so far as persecution is con- 
cerned. But, at the bottom, only so far, as we 
have already seen as to Wesley's attitude to the 
emancipation of Catholics. 42 

In regard to the terms of admission to his 
societies Wesley boasted over and over again 
that anyone desiring salvation was freely 

40 On the persecution of the Methodists see the very valu- 
able book by Barr, Early Methodists Under Persecution, 
1916, and the review of it by Faulkner in Methodist Review, 
New York, September, 1916, pp. 834-835. 

41 Eayrs, Letters of John Wesley, 1916, pp. 135, 136. See 
also in Works, vol. viii, p. 340; vol. xiii, 240. 

42 See above, p. 21. 



78 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

admitted, whatever his theological views (see 
above, pp. 36-8). In fact, that was one of the 
things he most prided himself on to offset the 
frequent charge that he was building a rival 
church. How could he be building an eccle- 
siasticism over against the Church of England 
when he had hardly any doctrinal tests what- 
ever to his societies, but anybody could be 
admitted, Quaker or Presbyterian, and still 
attend his own church, or even be urged or re- 
quired to attend his own? Wesley was right: 
it is the fashion of hierarchies and big churchly 
corporations to put up high doctrinal bars to 
membership, as witness the decisions of the 
Council of Trent and the Creed of Pius IV on 
the one side, the voluminous creeds of the 
Reformed Churches in the center, and the 
twenty-five Articles of Religion of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church (made a test of mem- 
bership in 1864, and still kept up even as late 
as 1916) on the other side. The apostolic 
simplicity was far too daring for our timid 
ecclesiastics: the confession of Christ as Lord, 
and baptism in his name. That was the open 
door of the church for a hundred or more years, 
but the day of the high bars closed that golden 
morning. Fox and Wesley had the vision to 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 79 

restore it, and to boast of restoring it. And 
Wesley's contention that his were only socie- 
ties and not churches, while perfectly sincere 
and on the surface true, did not rob him of the 
honor of that restoration. For look: Wesley's 
societies had their own times and places of 
worship, their own ministers, who baptized the 
converts in these places of worship and admin- 
istered the Lord's Supper to them there, their 
own rules, their own hymns and hymn books, 
and after 1784 partially their own liturgy — some 
half dozen or more distinct notes of a separate 
church. But this religious connection which 
Wesley deliberately aimed to make world-wide, 
he absolutely and to the very end refused to 
limit by any dogmatic tests of membership. 
And his followers in Great Britain, Canada, 
and Australasia, and many of those in the 
United States, have been true to him in this 
fidelity to the church as Christ and the apostles 
left it. 

But Wesley distinguished between members 
and the preachers or official instructors of 
Christian truth. Not, of course, that the for- 
mer were to be left to every wind of doctrine. 
He guarded against that with extreme care. 
Only he guarded against it in the New Testa- 



SO WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

ment way by experience, instruction, work, 
and not by the doctrinal bar at the entrance. 
But for preachers he was more specific. In 
order to clarify their theological ideas and 
give unity to their teaching he discussed 
doctrines in all his Conferences, and entered the 
results on the Minutes. Those results were 
dictated by himself. Legally, he, and he alone, 
was the Conference. His brother Charles he 
associated with himself in important documents, 
but it was like the inscriptions in Paul's letters 
— Silas or Sosthenes or others may be there, but 
everybody knows that it is PauFs soul alone 
that burns like a living fire through the words. 
A little handful of brother clergy who were with 
him in the movement are deferred to, and the 
lay preachers — at least those at the heads of 
circuits, the "assistants" — are invited and have 
perfect liberty to take part in the discussions, 
but it is Wesley alone who is responsible for the 
final shaping of the doctrinal or ecclesiastical 
deposit. Though he did not demand conform- 
ity to his opinions, the whole philosophy and 
method of his movement necessarily secured it. 
Besides, the fearful hardships of the service 
almost automatically secured the dropping of 
the preacher the moment he deviated seriously 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 81 

from Wesley. Just as the intense discipline of 
the Society (the military word "Company" is 
better) of Jesus, and the self-devotion in readi- 
ness to follow to the ends of the earth its far- 
flung standard, welded its members in unique 
unity of thought and intention, so the religious 
order of Methodism — an order growing out of 
its doctrines — and the fearful sacrifices to which 
its preachers were called fused the whole body 
in a wonderful harmony of teaching. For this 
reason Wesley did not need to abuse his author- 
ity by throwing out men who could not agree 
with him even on Calvinism, on which Wesley 
felt deeply. I recall his formal denial that he 
had ever dismissed a Calvinistic preacher who 
would work in decent accord with the move- 
ment, though this hardly seems in harmony 
with his action in the 1776 Conference: "What 
can be done to stop its [Calvinism's] progress? 

1. Let all our preachers carefully read our 
Tracts, and Mr. Fletcher's and Mr. Sellon's. 

2. Let them preach Universal Redemption 
frequently and explicitly," 43 etc. But his min- 
utes and his doctrinal sermons — and he was the 
greatest doctrinal preaeher of his time — were 
published immediately in pamphlet or book 

43 Minutes 1776, 8vo, ed. 1862 (reprint), vol. i, pp. 127, 128. 



82 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

form, were in the hands of all his preachers, by 
whom they were sold to the members, and were 
required to be sold, and kept his connection in 
a doctrinal unity perhaps not surpassed in 
history. 

In 1769 the Conference (that is, Wesley) 
resolved : 

1. To devote ourselves entirely to God, denying our- 
selves, taking up our cross daily, steadily aiming at one 
thing, to save our own souls, and them that hear us. 

2. To preach the Old Methodist doctrines, and no 
other, contained in the Minutes of the Conferences. 

3. To observe and enforce the whole Methodist dis- 
cipline, laid down in the Minutes. 44 

One of the questions asked by Wesley in 
receiving preachers was: "Do you know the 
Methodist plan of doctrine and discipline ?" 
And the direction was given: "Let him then 
read and carefully weigh what is contained 
therein [that is, the Large Minutes, where 
doctrines are given], and see if he can agree to 
it or not." 

The "care of all the churches" that rested on 
the shoulders of Wesley meant also the care of 
the doctrinal soundness of his preachers, to 

44 Minutes of Conference, 1769, 8vo, ed. of 1862, vol. i t 
pp. 88-89. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 83 

secure which he made ample provision. If any 
preacher had set forth essentially another 
gospel than Wesley's, he would have been dis- 
missed without the slightest hesitation. In 
fact, as to preaching, Wesley's concern for the 
scriptural truth went to the altogether unwar- 
rantable length of earnestly imploring Lady 
Maxwell to throw up her commission as execu- 
trix of the will of Lady Glenorchy, who had 
provided funds for the building of several 
Calvinistic chapels! 45 And from his reply to 
liberal Dr. Taylor, of Norwich, we can readily 
see that any important deviation of his preach- 
ers from historical Christianity would have 
been regarded with horror. 

Wesley was no systematic theologian. He 
neither had the time, inclination, nor resources 
for profound and long-continued study in the- 
ology in the way, say of Calvin, Turretini, 
Watson, Hodge, Shedd, etc. But he had 
intense interest in theological truth, and de- 
fended it with noble persistency and earnest- 
ness. That truth was to him what we know as 
the ordinary evangelical theology of our fathers 
and — excepting decrees and a few minor points 
— of all the Protestant Churches, Presbyterian, 

45 Eayrs, lib. cit, pp. 418, 419. 



84 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Baptist, Congregational, Low Church Episco- 
palian. As to th^ terms of membership in his 
societies, he was liberal; as to the definition of 
the church he was liberal; as to his- all-embracing 
catholicity of spirit in looking for the salvation 
of all earnest people, heathen and Christian, 
who lived according to their light, he was 
liberal; as to a wide mental outlook and com- 
munion with earnest, enlightened spirits of all 
races, times, and creeds, he was liberal. But 
as to utter devotion to the central truths of the 
gospel as historically witnessed by the evan- 
gelical Protestant churches, no one could be 
more conservative. He did not write this line, 
but he might have written it: 

"On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; 
All other ground is sinking sand." 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 85 

III 
WESLEY AS CHURCHMAN 

The relation of John Wesley and early 
Methodism to the Church of England is one 
of the disputed questions of church history. 
It has practical interest as well on account of 
the repeated attempts to induce the Meth- 
odists to join the Church of England or Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church on the ground of the 
alleged loyalty of Wesley to the church, and 
especially on account of his alleged High 
Church notions. From documents printed by 
Urlin some think that the common notion that 
Wesley maintained strictly evangelical opinions 
after 1738 must be revised. It is therefore of 
interest to inquire what was Wesley's real 
attitude toward the Established Church of his 
country. 

It is acknowledged on all hands that previous 
to his conversion in 1738 Wesley was an ardent 
High Churchman. He recommended confes- 
sion, he practiced weekly communion, he ob- 
served all the festivals and the fasts on Wednes- 
days and Fridays, he mixed the sacramental 



86 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

wine with water, and in other respects antici- 
pated the churchly enthusiasm of the Oxford re- 
formers of 1833. Now, it would be indeed 
remarkable if no trace of these sentiments ap- 
peared after the spiritual revolution of 1738. 
No doubt there are traces of High Church ideas 
after this. Wesley always maintained a theory 
as to the Lord's Supper which seems at first 
blush at no great distance from High Angli- 
canism. In 1788 he republished a sermon be 
had written in Oxford in 1733, and he says in 
the preface: "I have added very little, but re- 
trenched much, as I then used more words than 
I do now. But I thank God that I have not 
seen cause to alter my sentiments in any point 
which is therein delivered." He here calls 
the sacrament the "Christian sacrifice," but he 
does not explain in what sense he uses these 
words. He says: "As our bodies are strength- 
ened by bread and wine, so are our souls by 
these tokens of the body and blood of Christ." 
He who neglects the Supper shows that he 
"either does not understand his duty, or does 
not care for the dying command of his Saviour, 
the forgiveness of his sins, the strengthening of 
his soul, and the refreshing it with the hope of 
glory." But how the Supper does this is not 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 87 

explained. The "first Christians for several 
centuries/' says Wesley, "received it almost 
every day; four times a week always, and every 
saints' day beside. Those who joined in the 
prayers of the faithful never failed to partake of 
the blessed sacrament." He quotes the ancient 
canon: "If any believer join in the prayers of 
the faithful, and go away without receiving the 
Lord's Supper, let him be excommunicated as 
bringing confusion into the Church of God." 
The "design of the sacrament is the continual 
remembrance of the death of Christ by eating 
bread and drinking wine, which are the outward 
signs of the inward grace, the body and blood 
of Christ." God has given us "certain means 
of obtaining his help. One of these is the 
Lord's Supper, which of his infinite mercy he 
hath given for this very end; that through this 
means we may be assisted to attain those 
blessings which he hath prepared for us; that 
we may obtain holiness on earth, and ever- 
lasting glory in heaven." But here again just 
how the Supper does this Wesley is silent. He 
speaks later of the one who comes and receives 
no benefit. The reason of that, he says, is that 
he is "not rightly prepared, willing to obey all 
the commands and receive all the promises of 



88 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

God, or he did not receive it aright, trusting in 
God." From this it appears that the spiritual 
condition and response of the believer is the 
chief thing. If the soul is in the right condition, 
then the sacrament is a help. In this sermon 
Wesley strongly advocates "constant" com- 
munion, by which he means receiving the com- 
munion every time one worships in a church 
where it is given, never leaving the service 
without receiving where the Supper is offered. 
There is nothing especially High Church in 
this sermon. Any pious Methodist, Baptist, 
Presbyterian, who deeply appreciates the 
Eucharist, might have written it. 1 

In 1757 Wesley printed (4th ed.) extracts 
from a Eucharistical volume by Dr. Brevint as 
a preface to some sacramental hymns by him- 
self, and especially by his brother Charles, 
though the authorship of each is not distin- 
guished by name. This volume is quoted at 
length by High Church writers as evidence of 
Wesley's sacramentarianism. I have read all 
the parts which look in this direction, and I 
have not found anything inconsistent with the 
historic doctrine of the English Church that the 

1 Works, London ed., 14 vols., vol. vii, pp. 147-157 (Sermon 
101). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 89 

body and blood of Christ are partaken of in the 
sacrament in a spiritual manner. The Wesleys 
undoubtedly held to the Real Presence of Christ 
in the sacrament, but that presence was spiritual 
and not corporeal. Brevint teaches that the 
sacrament is a sacrifice, but he is too devotion- 
ally impressive to be theologically clear. He 
writes in a mystical, rhetorical, massive way, 
but his book is for practical and devotional 
purposes, and we do not know what doctrinal 
implications are behind either his or Charles 
Wesley's fervid impressionist representations. 
Notice the strong words of Brevint: "To men 
the Holy Communion is a sacred table where 
God's minister is ordered to represent from 
God his Master the sacrifice of his dear Son, 
as still fresh and still powerful for their eternal 
salvation. And to God it is an altar whereon 
men mystically present to Him the same sacri- 
fice as still bleeding and suing for mercy." 2 
And Charles Wesley: 

" 'Tis done; the Lord sets to his seal; 

The prayer is heard, the grace is given; 
With joy unspeakable we feel 

The Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven. 

2 The Eucharistical Manuals of John Wesley and Charles 
Wesley, reprinted, etc., ed. with Introduction by W. E. Dutton, 
London, 1871, p. 70. 



90 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

The altar flames with sacred blood, 
And all the temple flames with God!" 3 

Speaking of the early Christians: 

"From house to house they broke the bread 

Impregnated with the life divine, 
And drank the Spirit of their Head 
Transmitted in the sacred wine." 4 

Again: 

" 'Take and eat/ the Saviour saith, 

'This my sacred body is!' 
Him we take and eat by faith, 

Feed upon that flesh of his; 
All the benefits receive 

Which his passion did procure; 
Pardoned by his grace we live, 

Grace which makes salvation sure." 5 

"Sure instrument of present grace 
Thy sacrament we find; 
Yet higher blessings it displays, 
And raptures still behind.' ' 6 

"Now on the sacred table laid, 
Thy flesh becomes our food, 
Thy life is to our souls conveyed 
In sacramental blood." 7 



3 The Eucharistical Manuals of John Wesley and Charles 
Wesley, reprinted, etc., p. 169. 4 Ibid., p. 248. 

6 Ibid., p. 184. *Ibid., p. 176. 7 Ibid., p. 147. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 91 

No one could write these lines without holding 
a high doctrine of the Lord's Supper as a means 
of grace. Its preciousness to both the brothers 
was exceeding great. But I hardly think it 
fair to press these poetic realisms into theolog- 
ical molds, and on the strength of the result 
claim that Wesley departed from the ordinary 
teaching of the Church of England. That 
teaching is that the Supper was a memorial of 
Christ's death, in which Christ was spiritually 
present whether in the service or the elements, 
which elements became sacramentally the body 
and blood, partaking of which in faith our 
souls and bodies are built up into life eternal. 

As to baptism, Wesley continued to hold 
baptismal regeneration. He says: 

It is certain that our Church supposes that all who are 
baptized in their infancy are at the same time born again, 
and it is allowed that the whole office for the baptism of 
infants proceeds upon this supposition. 8 "The first benefit 
we receive by baptism is the washing away of the guilt 
of original sin, by the application of the merit of Christ's 
death. . . . Baptism is the ordinary instrument of our 
justification. ... In the rubric at the end of the office 
of baptism our Church declares: 'It is certain by God's 
Word that children who are baptized dying before they 
commit actual sin are saved.' By baptism we are ad- 

8 Works, vol. vi, p. 74 (Sermon 45). 



92 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

mitted Into the Church and consequently made men- 
bers of Christ, its Head. . . . By it we who are by nature 
children of wrath are made children of God. ... By 
water as a means, the water of baptism, we are regener- 
ated or born again. . . . Not by the outward washing, 
but by the inward grace added thereto. . . . Baptism 
doth now save us, if we live answerable thereto; if we 
repent, believe and obey the gospel." 9 Who denies that 
you were then [in baptism] made children of God, and 
heirs of the Kingdom of heaven?" 10 

But that will not save you now. He calls 
baptism the circumcision of Christ, "as St. 
Paul emphatically terms baptism" (though 
"Saint Paul does not term it that, but let that 
pass), but says that past baptism will not at 
all help you now except you are living as 
Christians should. 11 "I baptized a gentle- 
woman at the Foundery, and the peace she 
immediately found was a fresh proof that the 
outward sign, duly received, is always accom- 
panied with the inward grace." 12 

As to adults, Wesley held that baptism had 



9 Works, vol. x, pp. 190-192, "Treatise on Baptism," really 
by his father, but adopted as his own and published without 
name in Works (extracted 1756). 

10 Ibid., vol. v, p. 222 (Sermon 18). 

11 Ibid., vol. v, p. 221. The same in vol. viii, p. 48. 

12 Journal, February 5, 1760, new Standard ed., vol. iv t p. 
365. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 93 

no efficacy in itself. "Whatever be the case 
with infants, it is sure of all of riper years 
who are baptized are not at the same time born 
again." 13 He distinguished between the sign 
(the water) and the inner grace, and claimed 
that baptism was not necessarily the new birth, 14 
and with adults never except accompanied by 
penitence and faith. In his note on Acts 22. 
16, speaking of adults, he says: "Baptism admin- 
istered to real penitents is both a means and 
seal of pardon. Nor did God ordinarily, in the 
primitive Church, bestow this on any except 
through this means." But this opinion as to 
infant baptismal regeneration he held privately, 
and never tried to enforce it on his preachers, 
many of whom rejected it; and when he pre- 
pared his Sunday Service, in 1784, he elimi- 
nated all possible traces of the doctrine in this 
revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, a fact 
which shows that his final conclusion was not 
to insist on the doctrine in any sense. 

Twenty-five Articles of Thirty-nine Articles of 

the Methodist Episcopal Church of England (1563). 

Church as sent over by Art. 27: 
Wesley (1784). Art. 17: 



13 Ibid., vol. vi, p. 74 (Sermon 45). 

14 Ibid., vol. vi, p 73. 



94 



WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 



"Baptism is not only a 
sign of profession and mark 
of difference whereby Chris- 
tians are distinguished from 
others that are not bap- 
tized, but it is also a sign of 
regeneration or the new 
birth. The baptism of 
young children is to be re- 
tained in the Church." 



"Baptism is not only a 
sign of profession and mark 
of difference whereby Chris- 
tian men are discerned 
from others that be not 
Christians, but it is also a 
sign of regeneration or new 
birth, whereby, as by an 
instrument, they that re- 
ceive baptism rightly are 
grafted into the Church; 
the promise of forgiveness 
of sin, and of our adoption 
to be the sons of God by 
the Holy Ghost, are visibly 
signed and sealed; faith is 
confirmed, and grace in- 
creased by virtue of prayer 
unto God. The baptism of 
young children is in any 
wise to be retained in the 
Church as most agreeable 
with the institution of 
Christ." 

(The whole article refers 
to baptism in itself, whether 
given to infants or adults.) 

R. Denny Urlin, the High Church biographer 
of Wesley, and an enthusiastic student and 
lover of him, came into possession of certain 
papers which he published for the first time in 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 95 

1870. 15 Among them there was a fragment by 
Wesley which Urlin dates about 1741, and 
which read as follows: 

I believe [myself] it a duty to observe, so far as I can 
[without breaking communion with my own Church]. 16 

1. To baptize by immersion. 

2. To use water, Oblation of Elements, Invocation, 
Alms, or Prothesis, 17 in the Eucharist. 

3 To pray for the faithful departed. 

4. To pray standing on Sunday in Pentecost. 

5. To observe Saturday and Sunday Pentecost as 
festival. 

I think it prudent [our own Church not considered] — 

1. To observe the Stations. 18 

2. Lent, especially the Holy Week. 

3. To turn to the East at the Creed. 

That is certainly a pretty formidable list of 
ritualistic observances. Urlin argues that this 
manuscript belongs to 1741. I think, on the 
contrary, from internal evidence, there being no 
decisive external evidence, that this bit of High 

15 Wesley's Place in Church History (London, 1870, newed.), 
much changed and enlarged under title of The Churchman s 
Life of John Wesley (London, SPCK., 1886), pp. 66, 67. 

16 The words in brackets appear to have a line drawn through 
them with a pen. 

17 A prothesis was a little table or stand (same as credence 
table) used to hold elements, etc., before consecration. 

18 The Stations were fasts on Wednesday and Friday as 
observed in ancient church and Greek Church to-day. 



96 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Church literature antedates 1738, and belongs 
either to Wesley's Oxford or Georgia life. The 
observances mentioned in the list are thoroughly 
consonant with Wesley's notions and manner of 
life at that time, but after he began his evan- 
gelistic career they are out of tune with all his 
teaching; and, besides, it was physically im- 
possible to observe them. The fact that 
Wesley never published these notes shows that 
he considered them not to represent his mature 
convictions, and the fact that he did not 
destroy them shows that he considered them 
important in giving a view of his spiritual 
history. 

A strong indirect evidence of the persistent 
influence of Wesley's early ritualistic enthu- 
siasm, though turned into another channel, is 
the earnest, almost stern, ascetic, ethical and 
religious precepts which were embodied in his 
Rules for Preachers, in his Rules for the So- 
cieties, and in his Rules for the Bands. I do not 
know of anyone who has called attention to this. 

Let us now seek an actual history of Wesley's 
attitude toward the Church of England. His 
association with the Moravians had profoundly 
affected him, and their exposition of the way of 
salvation convinced him that salvation may be 






THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 97 

instantaneous, that it is to be sought by taith. 
This led to that remarkable experience in 
Aldersgate Street in May, 1738, which Wesley 
himself called his conversion, a word which he 
afterward retracted as too strong. A few 
days afterward he went so far as to declare that 
previous to that experience he had never been 
a Christian at all, but later reflection led him 
to correct this and to say that he had had indeed 
the faith of a servant; that is, he had been all 
along a Christian, but that he served God in a 
servile way, without the gladness and triumph 
that comes from the full trust of a child. At 
any rate, in that experience Methodism was 
born. On the strength of that he went forth 
calling sinners to immediate repentance and 
salvation. Miss Julia Wedgwood, in her 
thoughtful study, John Wesley and the Evan- 
gelical Reaction of the Eighteenth Century 
(London, 1870), has correctly judged the im- 
mense importance of that experience. She 
says (p. 157) that it meant that the emphasis of 
Wesley (and so of modern Protestantism) was 
to be changed from baptism to conversion. 
That experience cut up Wesley's High Church 
theology by the roots — I mean in its essential 
features. No longer was the stress to be laid 



98 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

upon the sacraments, upon observances and 
rites as means of salvation, but solely upon 
faith; and the chief means of conversion was 
preaching, not baptism nor confirmation nor 
catechizing nor worship. From this all the 
important features of the Methodist revival 
followed as a matter of course: (1) the organ- 
ization of the converted into societies and 
classes, where these who had been made kings 
and priests unto God testified of their experience 
in divine things; (2) the employment of lay 
preachers, who were sent forth everywhere 
preaching the gospel, and bringing multitudes 
to Christ; (3) extemporaneous prayer in the 
divine service. It followed also that sacramen- 
tarian theology disappeared as the central 
principle of the movement and the theology of 
Christian experience took its place. Anyone 
with the least discernment could see that such 
a movement as that foreboded ill to the Estab- 
lished Church, that it had within it the seeds of 
separation. As early as October, 1739, Wes- 
ley's brother Samuel, who bitterly lamented 
the new departures, wrote as follows to his 
mother : 

It was with exceeding concern and grief that I heard 
you had countenanced a spreading delusion, so far as to 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 99 

be one of Jack's congregation. It is not enough that I am 
bereft of both my brothers, but must my mother follow 
too? I earnestly beseech the Almighty to preserve you 
from joining a schism at the close of your life, as you were 
unfortunately engaged in one at the beginning of it. 19 It 
will cost you many a protest, should you retain your 
integrity, as I hope to God you will. They boast of you 
already as a disciple. They design separation. They are 
already forbidden all the pulpits in London, and to preach 
in that diocese is actual schism. In all likelihood, it will 
come to the same all over England, if the bishops have 
courage enough. They leave all the liturgy in the fields; 
and though Mr. Whitefield expresses his value for it, he 
never once read it to his tatterdemalions on a common. 
Their societies are sufficient to dissolve all other societies 
but their own. Will any man of common sense or spirit 
suffer any domestic to be in a band, engaged to relate to 
five or to ten people everything, without reserve that con- 
cerns the person's conscience, how much soever it may 
concern the family? Ought any married persons to be 
there unless husband and wife be there together? This 
is literally putting asunder what God has joined together. 
As I told Jack, I am not afraid the Church should ex- 
communicate him (discipline is at too low an ebb) but, 
that he should excommunicate the Church. It is pretty 
near it. Holiness and good works are not so much as 

19 Samuel Wesley refers to the fact that in her childhood 
home his mother was a Nonconformist, her father. Dr. An- 
nesley, being one of the ejected ministers. But as she delib- 
erately conformed to the church at the early age of thirteen, 
this reminder of her infantile Puritanism was very ungracious, 
if not insulting. 



100 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

conditions of our acceptance with God. Love feasts are 
introduced, and extemporary prayers, and expositions 
of Scripture, which last are enough to bring in all con- 
fusion; nor is it likely they will want any miracles to sup- 
port them. He only who ruleth the madness of the 
people can stop them from being a formed sect. Eccle- 
siastical censures have lost their terrors; thank fanaticism 
on the one hand, and atheism on the other. To talk of 
persecution from thence is mere insult. It is — 

"To call the bishop, Grey-beard Goff, 
And make his power as mere a scoff, 
As Dagon, when his hands were off." 20 

It is evident from this remarkable letter, 
that Samuel Wesley, had he lived, would have 
been the determined enemy of his brother's 
work, for with f arsighted prescience he saw that 
it would issue in a permanent separation from 
the church. Whether Wesley himself saw this 
trend we cannot say. At any rate, he was too 
near the movement and too absorbed in his 
evangelism to judge the issues of it with the 
sagacity of his older brother. But if he saw 
that trend, he never lost any sleep over it, con- 
scientiously attached, though he was, to the 
church. 

At the first Conference, in 1744, it was 

20 Priestley's Letters ', p. 108; Tyerman, Life of Wesley, vol. 
i, pp. 286, 287. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 101 

resolved to defend the doctrine of the Church 
of England, both by their preaching and living; 
to obey the bishops in all things indifferent, and 
to observe the canons of the church as far as 
they could with a safe conscience; and finally, 
to exert themselves to the utmost not to entail 
a schism in the church, by their hearers forming 
themselves into a distinct sect, though they 
agreed that they must not neglect the present 
opportunity of saving souls, for fear of conse- 
quences which might possibly or probably 
happen after they were dead. 21 Thus at the 
very first Conference Wesley and his preachers 
laid down a program to which they continuously 
adhered as long as the founder lived, namely, a 
qualified adherence to the church, but at the 
sacrifice of no principle, at the expense of no 
limitation on the movement, and with no fear 
of far-off consequences. 22 

There is no doubt that Wesley had great 
respect for Episcopal Church government, and 
that he firmly believed that no unordained man 
should administer the sacraments. But how 
early his High Church theories were superseded, 
or were in the process of being superseded, is 

21 Tyerman, vol. i, p. 444. 

22 The same principles appear in Works, vol. i, pp. 486-489. 



102 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

afforded by his Minute in the second Con- 
ference, 1745, which is certainly ingenious and 
interesting, whatever else may be said for it: 

Q. 1. Can he be a spiritual governor of the Church who 
is not a believer or member of it? 
A. It seems not; though he may be a governor in 
outward things by a power delivered from the 
king. 23 
Q. 2. What are properly the laws of the Church of 
England? 
A. The Rubrics; and to those we submit as the 
ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake. 
Q. 3. Is not the will of our governors a law? 

A. No; not of any governor, temporal or spiritual. 
Therefore if any bishop wills that I should not 
preach the Gospel, his will is no law to me. 24 
Q. 4. But what if he produce a law against your 
preaching? 
A. I am to obey God rather than man. 
Q. 5. Is Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Independent [that 
is, Congregational] Church government most 
agreeable to reason? 
A. The plain origin of Church government seems to 
be this. Christ sends forth a preacher of the 
Gospel. Some who hear him repent and believe 
the Gospel. They then desire him to watch over 

23 In this Wesley releases himself from obedience to all un- 
converted bishops, the very negative of High Churchism. 

24 Compare with this John Henry Newman's respect for 
his bishop in his Tractarian period, as that was of the essence 
of Catholicism. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 103 

them, to build them up in faith, and to guide 
their souls in the paths of righteousness. Here, 
then, is an independent congregation subject to 
no pastor but their own, neither liable to be 
controlled in things spiritual by any other man 
or body of men whatsoever. But soon after, some 
from other parts, who are occasionally present 
while he speaks in the name of Him that sent him, 
beseech him to come over and help them also. 
Knowing it to be the will of God, he consents, yet 
not till he has conferred with the wisest and 
holiest of his congregation, and with their advice 
appointed one or more who have gifts of grace to 
watch over the flock till his return. If it pleases 
God to raise another flock in the new place, before 
he leaves them he does the same thing, appointing 
one whom God has fitted for the work to watch 
over these souls also. In like manner, in every 
place where it pleases God to gather a little flock 
by his Word, he appoints one in his absence to 
take the oversight of the rest, and to assist them of 
the abilities which God giveth. These are deacons 
or servants of the Church, and look on the first 
pastor as their common father. And all these 
congregations regard him in the same light, and 
esteem him still as the shepherd of their souls. 
These congregations are not absolutely independ- 
ent, they depend on one pastor, though not on 
each other. As these congregations increase, and 
as their deacons grow in years and grace, they 
need other subordinate deacons or helpers, in 
respect to whom they may be called presbyters or 



104 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

elders, as their father in the Lord may be called 

the bishop or overseer of them all. 
Q. 6. Is mutual consent absolutely necessary between 

the pastor and his flock? 
A. No question. I cannot guide any soul unless he 

consent to be guided by me. Neither can any 

soul force me to guide him if I consent not. 
Q. 7. Does the ceasing of this consent on either side 

dissolve that relation? 
A. It must, in the very nature of things. If a man 

no longer consents to be guided by me I am no 

longer his guide. I am free. If one will not 

guide me any longer I am free to seek one who 

will. 25 

This simple and unaffected exposition of 
primitive church polity after a modified Con- 
gregational-Episcopal pattern, a kind of uncon- 
scious response to his own history, and in which 
he virtually calls his preachers presbyters and 
himself bishop, is a remarkable production for 
an ardent son of the Church of England. It is 
certainly a rare document to come from a High 
Churchman. This exposition was not concealed 
among his papers, but published immediately 
in the authoritative Minutes of his Conference. 
And yet it is an illustration of one of those 
strange transitions in Wesley's thought, and of 
his holding apparently contradictory positions — 

^Minutes of Conferences, vol. i, pp. 26, 27 (last London ed.) 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 105 

a fact which has given so much trouble to both 
Methodists and Anglicans — that in December 
of that same year, 1745, he wrote to his brother- 
in-law, Westley Hall, who had urged him to 
renounce the Church of England, a letter in 
which he came out strongly for the apostolic 
authority of the threefold ministry. He 
says: 

We believe it would not be right for us to administer 
either baptism or the Lord's Supper unless we had a 
commission to do so from those bishops whom we appre- 
hend to be in a succession from the apostles. And yet 
we allow these bishops are the successors of those who 
were dependent on the bishop of Rome. . . . We believe 
there is and always was in every Christian Church, 
whether dependent on the bishop of Rome or not, an 
outward priesthood, ordained by Jesus Christ, and out- 
ward sacrifice afforded therein, by men authorized to act 
as ambassadors of Christ and stewards of the mysteries 
of God. . . . We believe that the threefold order of 
ministers, which you seem to mean by papal hierarchy 
and prelacy, is not only authorized by its apostolical 
institution, but also by the written Word. 26 

This is certainly explicit enough to satisfy any 
High Churchman. In the same letter he says 
he will follow the laws of the Church of England 
only as far as his conscience will permit. But 

26 Works, vol. ii, p. 4. 



106 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

notice this: On the same page of his Journals, 
under date of January 20, 1746, Wesley writes: 

I set out for Bristol. On the road I read over Lord 
King's Account of the Primitive Church. In spite of the 
vehement prejudice of my education, I was ready to be- 
lieve that this was a fair and impartial draught; but if so, 
it would follow that bishops and presbyters are (essen- 
tially) of one order, and that originally every Christian 
congregation was a Church independent of all others! 

In spite therefore of his bold words to Hall, 
it would seem, after all, that the declaration of 
his Conference of 1745 would stand. But at 
his next Conference he tried to come to a middle 
position. After calling a national church a 
"merely political institution," he says: 

Q. Are the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons 

plainly described in the New Testament? 
A. We think they are; and believe they generally 

obtained in the apostolic age. 
Q. But are you assured that God designed the same 

plan should obtain in all churches, throughout all 

ages? 
A. We are not assured of this, because we do not know 

that it is inserted in the Holy Writ. 
Q. If this plan were essential to a Christian Church, 

what must become of all the foreign reformed 

Churches? 
A. It would follow that they are no parts of the Church 

of Christ. A consequence full of shocking absurdity. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 107 

Q. In what age was the divine right of episcopacy first 
asserted in England? 

A. About the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Till 
then all the bishops and clergy in England contin- 
ually allowed and joined in the ministrations of 
those who were not episcopally ordained. 

Q. Must there not be numberless accidental varieties 
in the government of various churches? 

A. There must in the nature of things. For as God 
variously dispenses his gifts of nature, providence, 
and grace, both the officers themselves and the 
offices in each ought to be varied from time to time. 

Q. Why is it that there is no determinate pJan of church 
government appointed in Scripture? 

A. Without doubt, because the wisdom of God had 
regard to a necessary variety. 

Q. Was there any thought of uniformity in the govern- 
ment of all churches, until the time of Constantine? 

A. It is certain there was not, and would not have 
been then, had men consulted the word of God 
only. 27 

If therefore Wesley spoke as a High Church- 
man to Hall in December, 1745, he spoke as a 
Low Churchman in the summer of 1747. 
Tyerman says that ever after this the opinions 
of Wesley on ecclesiastical polity were sub- 
stantially those of Dissenters, and although 
this is a fair induction, there are incongruous 

27 Minutes, ed. 1862 (reprint), vol. i, p. 36; Tyerman, vol. i, 
p. 509. 



108 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

elements yet left in Wesley's Churchman- 
ship. 

Nearly ten years after this we find Wesley 
still firm in his broad views as to the church, 
and confirmed in them by Bishop Stillingfleet's 
Eirenicon. In a letter to a clergyman dated 
July 3, 1756, he says: 

I still believe the Episcopal form of Church government 
to be scriptural and apostolical. I mean, well agreeing 
with the practice and writings of the apostles. But that 
it is prescribed in Scripture, I do not believe. This 
opinion which I once zealously espoused, I have been 
heartily ashamed of ever since I read Bishop Stillingfleet's 
Irenicon. I think that he has unanswerably proved that 
neither Christ nor his apostles have ever prescribed any 
form of Church government, and that the plea of divine 
right for diocesan episcopacy was never heard of in the 
primitive Church. . . . 

As to heresy and schism, I cannot find one text in the 
Bible where they are taken in the modern sense. I re- 
member no one Scripture wherein heresy signifies error 
in opinion, whether fundamental or not; nor any where- 
in schism signifies a separation from the Church, whether 
with cause or without. 28 

Speaking of Stillingfleet's Eirenicon, I might 
say that Wesley brings it in again over against 
Article 23 of the thirty-nine Articles of the 



28 Works, vol. xiii, p. 211; Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 244. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 109 

Church of England, which says that no one 
shall preach or administer sacraments who has 
not received public authority by the proper 
officers (meaning bishops of the Church of 
England), which he was accused of violating. 
Wesley says: "They [the Wesleys and others] 
subscribed it [the twenty-third Article] in the 
simplicity of their hearts when they firmly 
believed none but episcopal ordination valid. 
But Bishop Stillingfleet has since fully con- 
vinced them this was an entire mistake." 29 
Much later he says again: "Read Bishop Still- 
ingfleet's Irenicon, or any impartial history of 
the ancient Church, and I believe you will 
think as I dc. I verily believe I have as good 
right to ordain as to administer the Lord's 
Supper. But I see abundance of reasons why 
I should not use that right unless I was turned 
out of the Church." 30 Later he saw reasons 
and used the right. 

In 1761 Wesley, answering a Roman Catholic, 
claims a true succession for the Reformed 
churches, but it is a spiritual succession, and he 
says that the apostolical succession, on which 
the validity of the Roman Catholic bishop rests, 

29 Ibid., vol. xiii, pp. 235, 236 (1761). 
*°Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 147 (1780). 



110 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

has no evidence. "I could never see it proved; 
and I am persuaded I never shall." 31 And far 
on in the evening of his life, he declared himself 
to the same intent. In a letter to his brother 
Charles, who had upbraided him severely for 
ordaining preachers for America, he says (1785) : 

For these forty years I have been in doubt concerning 
the question, what obedience is due to 

"Heathenish priests, and mitered infidels?" 32 

I have from time to time proposed my doubts to the most 
pious and sensible clergymen I knew. But they gave me 
no satisfaction. Rather they seemed to be puzzled as 
well as me. Obedience I always paid to the bishops in 
obedience to the laws of the land. But I cannot see that 
I am under any obligation to obey the^n further than 
those laws require. It is in obedience to those laws that 
I have never exercised in England the power which I 
believe God has given me. I firmly believe I am a Scrip- 
tural E7r/(TK07ros as much as any man in England, or in 
Europe, for the uninterrupted succession I know to be 
a fable, which no man ever did or can prove. 33 

The question of separation of the Methodists 
from the Church of England was a question in 

31 Journal, February, 1761. 

32 This is a quotation from one of Charles Wesley's early 
poems in which he describes church clergymen. This senti- 
ment Charles afterward withdrew as too strong. 

33 Jackson, Life of Charles Wesley, pp. 729, 730 (New York 
ed.), vol. ii, pp. 394-396 (1st London ed.). 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 111 

perpetual discussion in the Conferences from 
the first Conference almost to the close of 
Wesley's life. The very fact that Wesley 
allowed it to come up constantly, that it was 
always a mooted question, and that Wesley's 
solution of it was: For the present we remain 
in the Church; let the future take care of itself 
— thus referring its final solution to his succes- 
sors — shows that his attachment to the Church 
of England, though hearty, rested on expedi- 
ency, and not on divine obligation. I have 
read the decisions of all the Conferences on this 
question, and Wesley's voluminous correspond- 
ence, and I find the sum of it to be : Whether or 
no separation is lawful, it is not expedient. 
Sometimes he was more concerned for union, at 
other times he was less concerned. At one 
time he waves it aside as an external question 
of no consequence: "I dare not in conscience," 
he says, speaking of this, "spend my time and 
strength on externals. If, as my Lady [Hunt- 
ingdon] says, all outward establishments are 
Babel, so is this establishment. Let it stand 
for me, I neither set it up, nor pull it down. 
But let you [he is writing to Charles] and I 
build up the City of God." 34 

34 June 28, 1755, Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 206. 



112 s WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

A most important document is the letter of 
Wesley to the Rev. Samuel Walker, a zealous 
clergyman in Truro, written after the Confer- 
ence of 1755. In this he gives the reasons for 
separation urged in the debates. These reasons 
were: 1. Though the liturgy is excellent, it is 
"absurd and sinful to declare such an assent 
and consent to any merely human composi- 
tion" as is required to it. 2. Though they did 
not object to the use of forms, they durst not 
confine themselves to them. 3. Because they 
considered the decretals of the Church as the 
"very dregs of popery," and "many of the 
canons as grossly wicked as absurd." The 
spirit which the canons breathe is throughout 
popish and anti-Christian. Nothing can be 
more diabolical than the ipso-facto excom- 
munication so often denounced therein, while 
the whole method of executing these canons in 
our spiritual courts is too bad to be tolerated, 
not in a Christian, but in a Mohammedan or 
pagan nation. 4. Because they feared that 
many of ^the Church of England ministers 
neither lived the gospel, taught it, nor knew it, 
and because they doubted "whether it was 
lawful to attend the ministrations of those 
whom God had not sent to minister." 5. Be- 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 113 

cause the doctrines preached by these clergy- 
men were "not only wrong, but fundamentally 
so, and subversive of the whole Gospel." Then 
Wesley says: "I will freely acknowledge that I 
cannot answer the arguments given to my own 
satisfaction; so that my conclusion, which I 
cannot yet give up, that it is lawful to continue 
in the Church, stands almost without any 
premises that are able to bear its weight." 
Certainly, that is a strange confession for a 
High Churchman. He then says, "The original 
doctrines of the Church of England are sound, 
and I know her worship is in the main pure and 
Scriptural; but if the essence of the Church of 
England, considered as such, consists in her 
orders and laws, many of which I myself can 
say nothing for, and not in her worship and 
doctrines, those who separate from her have a 
far stronger plea than I was ever sensible of." 35 
I could give many other quotations from 
Wesley equally significant. 

After this Wesley came under strong pressure 
from Charles, from Whitefield, Lady Hunting- 
don, and from the clergy friendly to the Meth- 
odists, to take a more decided stand to keep 

35 Methodist Magazine, 1779, p. 371; Tyerman, vol. ii, pp. 
207, 208. 



114 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

his people into closer touch with the church, 
all of which, of course, went along with his own 
education, preferences, etc. In 1758 he issued 
a pamphlet, Reasons Against Separation from 
the Church of England, 2d ed., 1760, reprinted 
in facsimile by the Historical Club (New York) 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 1875, in 
which he gives twelve reasons for Methodists 
not becoming a separate church or denomina- 
tion. These are: 1. It would contradict our 
repeated declarations. 2. It would give oc- 
casion of offense to the enemies of God. 3. It 
would prejudice against us pious folk who now 
receive benefit from our preaching. 4. It would 
hinder multitudes who do not love God from 
hearing us. 5. It would cause hundreds, if not 
thousands, of our people to separate from us. 

6. It would cause much strife, first between 
those who left the church and those who did not, 
and second between those who left us and those 
who did not, whereas we are now in peace. 

7. It would cause public and private contro- 
versy, and thus take our time from preaching 
vital religion. 8. We should have to form a 
plan for a new church, and for that we have 
neither time nor competence. 9. Even distant 
thoughts of leaving the church has caused some 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 115 

to conceive and express contempt of the clergy. 
10. History shows that reformers — instance 
Arndt and Robert Bolton — have done much 
more good when they remained in their churches 
than when they separated. 11. This is shown 
in England in our own memory. Those who 
left the church and formed new bodies have not 
prospered, and have not been more holy or use- 
ful than before. 12. Such separation would 
contradict the very end for which God has 
raised us up. That end is to quicken our 
brethren of the Church of England, our first 
message to the lost sheep of that church. 

He then gives some more general reasons for 
keeping on in his usual course. He looks upon 
himself not as the author of a sect or party, but 
as a "messenger of God to those who are Chris 
tians in name, but heathens in heart and life," 
to call them back to real genuine Christianity. 
We are debtors to all of "whatsoever opinion or 
denomination" to "please all for their good to 
edification." The Methodists are raised up to 
be witnesses to "every part" of that Christianity 
which we preach. He looks upon England as 
the special land, and the Church of England as 
the special church, to which, as being born and 
brought up in, he owes his chief concern and 



116 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

work. When he thinks of that "complicated 
wickedness which covers them as a flood" he 
feels he must "spend and be spent for them." 
We must particularly regard the clergy and 
make it a sacred rule to all our preachers — 
"No contempt, no bitterness to the clergy." 
Also, while we do not condemn attending Dis- 
senting meeting for those who have been ac- 
customed to it, we think it expedient for our 
preachers who have not been accustomed to it 
not to do this, because, first, that is actually 
separating; and second, because Dissenting 
meeting is at the same hour as the church. If 
anyone says we are fed with chaff at the church, 
we reply, The prayers and Supper are not 
chaff, and there will certainly be some truth in 
the sermon. Then in the Meeting (Noncon- 
formist worship) the preachers are either New 
Light men "denying the Lord that bought them 
and overturning his Gospel from the very 
foundations," or they are predestinarians. Ex- 
perience has shown that our brethren who have 
imbibed this doctrine have become "fond of 
opinions and strife and words, and despise self- 
denial and the daily cross." Another reason 
is so interesting that I quote the whole para- 
graph: 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 117 

Nor is it expedient for any Methodist preacher to 
imitate the Dissenters in their manner of praying; either, 
in his tone — all particular tones both in prayer and 
preaching should be avoided with the utmost care; nor 
in his language — all his words should be plain and simple, 
such as the lowest of his hearers both use and understand. 
Or in the length of his prayer, which should not usually 
exceed four or five minutes, either before or after sermon. 
One might add, neither should we sing, like them, in a 
slow, drawling manner: we sing swift, both because it 
saves time and because it tends to awaken and enliven 
the soul. 

We should not speak contemptuously of the 
church, but treat her blemishes with "solemn 
sorrow before God/' Every Methodist preacher 
who has no scruple should attend the church 
service as often as he can. Our preachers 
should also read Preservative Against Unsettled 
Notions in Religion, Serious Thoughts Concern- 
ing Perseverance, and Predestination Calmly 
Considered. They will then be able to answer 
objections. 

I wonder if the Nonconformist churches in 
Wesley's time had been Arminian and evan- 
gelical, would he have felt this dread of Meth- 
odists becoming an independent church. To 
him the Church of England was the only middle 
ground that England then offered between 



118 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

Calvinism and Unitarianism. And as he de- 
tested both, he was anxious to keep the Meth- 
odists either in his own societies or close to the 
Church of England. 

But what, historically, was the relation be- 
tween the Methodists and the church? Wes- 
ley's arguments here really move in a vacuum. 
The majority of the people of England had been 
baptized in infancy in the Church of England. 
The Dissenters had been kept down and when 
possible persecuted by the church. Even at 
this time they had but few rights compared with 
what they have to-day. But as supported by 
the state, and with so many Catholic elements, 
the clergy of the church had lapsed from devo- 
tion, many into carelessness, some into fast 
living, like horse-racing, hunting, etc., some 
into drink and immorality. The people of 
England were drifting into unbelief, indifference, 
and many into vice. It was a sodden and 
rotten England, as can be seen by the persecu- 
tions from mobs suffered by the Methodists, by 
the pictures of Hogarth, or the novels of Field- 
ing. In fact, if you want to know the kind of 
morality there was in England when Wesley 
came out, and the kind of clergy he had to deal 
with, read that wonderfully clever and brilliant 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 119 

story, almost Shakespearean in its knowledge 
of soul and life, Fielding's Tom Jones. Now 
Wesley and Whitefield, ministers of that church, 
and their assistants went out to call the people 
to repentance. They were shut out from the 
churches and had to take to the fields and 
market places. They had fruits. Wesley's 
converts were gathered into classes, with their 
own services, their own hymns, their own 
religious organization. They had really no 
more to do with the Established Church than 
with the Baptist Church, except that Wesley 
held his services not in church hours, and 
exhorted his people to go to the church at those 
hours, and to take communion there. Some 
did and some did not. Those who did not were 
not disciplined. The church itself took no cogni- 
zance of the Methodist societies. She did not 
dovetail them into her organization. Some of 
her clergy were sympathetic to the movement, 
and helped it all they could. Others were 
opposed to it, and others still persecuted it. 
The Methodists were legally and formally no 
more a part of the Episcopal Church of England 
than they were of the Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland, and the most of them were not even 
morally and spiritually a part. So that a good 



120 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

deal of Wesley's talk about separation had no 
bearing on facts. What bearing it had was 
simply this: I am determined while I live not 
to encourage my people to go to the non- 
Episcopal Churches for worship and sacraments, 
though not strictly forbidding them and allow- 
ing those who are accustomed to go, and I am 
determined not to organize the Methodists into 
a regular Nonconformist Church. 

A similar line of thought comes out in Sermon 
104, "On Attending the Church Service/' It 
is to refute those who allege the evil living of 
Episcopal clergymen as an excuse for not 
attending worship in the Established Church. 
Though the sermon has no date, internal evi- 
dence shows it was written in his old age ("near 
fifty years ago a great and good man, Dr. 
Potter, then archbishop of Canterbury, gave me 
an advice," etc.). It is one of the many writ- 
ings of Wesley which show how diligently he 
studied church history. He gives a sketch of 
the history of the church, tells how both 
Jewish priests and Christian ministers and 
priests degenerated, that pious people then 
felt that they could not attend the ministra- 
tions of these because they conceived such 
priests could be the vehicle of no divine blessing. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 121 

Wesley here speaks with frankness of the moral 
(rather immoral) condition of the ministers of 
his own church. But in spite of this, did the 
Jewish prophets urge the Jews not to attend the 
regular services? Not at all. Did Christ warn 
them against going to temple or synagogue? 
No, just the contrary. Later, Christians did 
separate for this reason from church worship. 
But the consequence was the church became 
more corrupt still. Well, did not Luther and 
Calvin separate? No, they were driven out. 
Later still some went out from the Church of 
England, but "they were not a jot better than 
those they separated from. 5 ' It is said that 
the ministry of evil men cannot convey the 
grace of God, but this is not so. (1) If it were, 
it would mean "all the children of Israel went 
to hell for eleven or twelve hundred years 
together." (2) It would mean also that most 
Christians had perished, for the church's min- 
isters have generally been corrupt in all ages. 
These two suppositions are impossible, for they 
imply that God had forgotten to be gracious. 
(3) Christ commanded the people to hear the 
religious teachers of his day (Matt. 23). (4) The 
efficacy of God's ordinances is derived not from 
the ministers who administer, but from Him 



122 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

who ordains them. (5) Experience shows that 
people who worship in national churches, where 
"it is great odds whether a holy minister be 
stationed there/ 5 do really receive spiritual 
blessings, find that the "word of the Lord is not 
bound, and that the sacraments are not dry 
breasts." (6) Acting on the belief here refuted 
would bring fearful confusion, strife, jealousies, 
tumults, which might proceed from evil words 
to evil deeds and "rivers of blood be shed" to 
the scandal of the heathen. So, argues Wesley, 
our "original rule" was a good one, namely, 
"that every member of our society should 
attend the church and sacrament, unless he 
had been bred among Christians of any other 
denomination." 36 

It is not necessary to comment on this ser- 
mon. No one now would argue that the benefit 
we receive from worship or sacrament depends 
upon the worthiness of the leader. Everyone 
knows that that benefit depends upon the 
faith, love and spiritual faculties of the partici- 
pant, and upon the truth he there receives. 
But if the Episcopal ministers were really as 
corrupt as Wesley presupposes, it was a fearful 
commentary on that church, and might well 

36 Works, vol. vii, pp. 174-185. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 123 

lead to the deeper question: Can a church be a 
Christian church at all whose official representa- 
tives are so unchristian? And if it is not a 
Christian church, then why not go into one that 
is, or form one that is? But here again, so far 
as the pertinency of his argument went and the 
consistency of that argument with his own life, 
Wesley was beating the air. He was out of 
touch with reality. He had himself in effect 
separated from the church. He had from the 
beginning formally appointed men to the work 
of preaching the gospel, and sent them into 
parishes of the Church of England to preach, 
and to gather people into societies, entirely 
separate from the church. This was clearly 
contrary to the rules of the Church of England 
and of every other church. The same thing 
done to-day would not be tolerated by any 
church in the world. Walker of Truro, Wesley's 
friend, saw this. He says: "Lay preachers, 
being contrary to the constitution of the Church 
of England, are, as far as that point goes, a 
separation from it." Thomas Adam, rector of 
Wintringham, also a friend of the Wesleys, is 
equally explicit as to the fatal breach between 
Methodism and the church. Writing in 1756, 
he says, in a letter which I shall quote more 



124 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

fully, that lay preaching is a "manifest irregu- 
larity, and would not be endured in any Chris- 
tian society/' Wesley over and over again 
laid down this platform: I cannot give up lay 
preaching, organization of societies, extem- 
pore prayer. These he considered of more im- 
portance than church order. At the same time 
he would not allow these preachers to admin- 
ister the sacraments, and in a letter of 1756 he 
gives the reason. He says that there is abso- 
lute necessity for lay preaching, for otherwise 
thousands of souls would perish everlastingly, 
but there is not absolute necessity for lay admin- 
istering, for not one soul will perish for want of 
it — a characteristic remark of Wesley, and one 
which shows the immense drift from his sacra- 
mentarianism of 1733 to his evangelicalism 
of 1756. 

Another line of evidence of very great interest 
is the opinion of Wesley's contemporaries. 
How did they look upon his relation to the 
Church of England? Was he to their eyes the 
faithful High Churchman whom some modern 
Episcopalians have set* before us? I have 
already quoted the letter of Samuel Wesley to 
his mother, written at the very beginning of the 
movement, 1739, in which he urges his mother 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 125 

to have nothing to do with a work which is 
already schismatic and will inevitably grow 
more and more so. 

After Methodism had been well established, 
in 1755, a clerical friend of Wesley, the Rev. 
Mr. Baddiley, wrote him beseeching him not 
to allow the Methodists to become Dissenters — 
a contingency Baddiley profoundly feared. 

Be not, dear sir, estranged in your affection, nor strait- 
ened in your bowels of love to the mother that bare you, 
and still contiuues, notwithstanding small irregularities 
in you, to dandle you on her knees. O labor, watch, and 
pray, with all your might, that no such breach be made. 
Wherefore should the pick thank heathen have cause to 
say, "Where is now their God?" I query much, if, upon 
dissenting from the Established Church, the divisions 
and subdivisions of the Methodists among themselves 
would not exceed those of the Anabaptists in Germany. 37 

Baddiley's fears were shared by Whitefield. 
In the same year this great preacher wrote to 
Lady Huntingdon: 

Oh, how hath my pleasure been annoyed at Leeds 
[where the Conference had just been held in which a long 
debate had been allowed by Wesley on the question of 
total separation from the Church, on ordination, etc., 
the ablest and most consecrated of the preachers being 
for separation, their arguments being, as Wesley himself 

37 Methodist Magazine, 1779, p. 320; Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 205. 



126 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

admitted, unanswerable]. I rejoiced there with trem- 
bling, for unknown to me, they had almost finished a 
large house in order to form a separate congregation. 
If this scheme succeeds, an awful separation, I fear, will 
take place among the societies. I have written to Mr. 
Wesley, and I have done all I could to prevent it. Oh 
this self-love, this self-will! It is the devil of devils. 38 

Thomas Adam, rector of Wintringham, near 
Malton, Yorkshire, seemed to share the views of 
Samuel Wesley as to the schismatic trend of 
Methodism. In a letter to Wesley, October 10, 
1755, he says: 

Your presentjembarrassments a&e very great «[over*the 
struggle for independence on the part of many of the 
people and preachers], and should be a warning to all 
how they venture upon a revolt from the authority and 
standing rules of the Church to which they belong. I 
fear, sir, that your saying you do not appoint, but only 
approve of the lay preachers, from a persuasion of their 
call and fitness, savors of disingenuity. Where is the 
difference? Under whose sanction do they act? Would 
they think their call a sufficient warrant for commencing 
preaching without your approbation, tacit or express? 
And what is their preaching upon this call but a manifest 
breach upon the order of the Church, and an inlet to 
confusion? Upon the whole, therefore, I submit to your 
serious consideration whether the separation is not wide 
enough already, particularly in the instance of unordained 
persons preaching and gathering societies to themselves, 

38 Whitefield, Works, vol. ii, p. 144; Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 209. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 127 

wherever they can, and whether all the Methodists might 
not serve the interests of Christ better by returning to a 
closer union with the Church, or repairing the breach 
they have made, than by making it still wider, and separ- 
ating, what they think, the Gospel leaven from the 
lump. 39 , 

This was a strong appeal, and Wesley could 
not from the standpoint of the churchman well 
answer it. In his reply he places his work on 
the high ground of extraordinary necessity. 
"That I have not gone too far yet I know, but 
whether I have gone far enough I am extremely 
doubtful. I see those running whom God has 
not sent; destroying their own souls, and those 
that hear them. Unless I warn in all ways I 
can these perishing souls of their danger, am I 
clear of the blood of these men? Soul-damning 
clergymen lay me under more difficulties than 
soul-saving laymen." 40 

The breach which Adam saw Methodism 
made in the church, and which he deprecated 
in his letter to Wesley in 1755, he still further 
defines in his letter to his friend Samuel Walker 
the next year. Walker had written his fears 
concerning Methodism to Adam. The answer 

39 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1779, p. 373; Tyerman, 
vol. ii, pp. 239, 240. 

40 Ibid., 1779, p. 376; Tyerman, vol. ii, p. 211. 



128 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

of Adam is one of the most straightforward 
judgments of Wesley's relation to the church 
which that time has handed down to us. This 
clear-headed clergyman, a friend to the Wesleys 
and yet loyal to the church, expresses the 
whole situation in words so significant that I 
give his brief letter in full. 

September 21, 1756. 
Dear Sir: Methodism, as to its external form, is such 
a deviation from the rule and constitution of the Church 
of England that all attempts to render it consistent must 
be in vain. Lay preaching is a manifest irregularity and 
would not be endorsed in any Christian society. To 
salve this sore, you say, Let some of their lay preachers be 
ordained. But suppose they were, to what end would 
they be ordained? That they might still go on to preach 
in fields, or private houses, and hold separate meetings? 
This would be as great a breach upon the order of the 
Church as ever, and perhaps attended with greater incon- 
veniences than their present practice. J. Wesley will not, 
cannot give up the point of lay preaching; it will be 
giving up all, he must cry, "Peccavi" ("I have sinned") 
and his heart will hold him a tug before it comes to that. 
Upon the whole, my judgment is that they have em- 
barrassed themselves past recovery; and must either go 
on in their present form or separate totally and openly. 
The latter, many think, would be more ingenuous than an 
underhand separation. I think you must ev'n let the 
Methodists alone. I do not see what help you can afford 
them, consistently with their principles and your own. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 129 

"Every plant," etc., should make us tremble on one side 
and the other. 

I am, reverend and dear sir, 

Your unworthy brother 

Thomas Adam. 41 

As early as 1756 Charles Wesley saw that it 
needed resolute dealing to counteract the pow- 
erful force that was bearing the Methodists 
away from the church. He would cut off im- 
mediately all the preachers who were not in 
sympathy with the church, and have all the 
"sound ones" prepared for orders. Then he 
would have his brother "declare and avow in 
the strongest and most explicit manner his 
resolution to live and die in the communion of 
the Church of England, and take all proper 
pains to instruct and ground both his preachers 
and his flock in the same." 42 In this wish he 
was powerfully seconded by the Rev. Samuel 
Walker of Truro. Mr. Walker, a friend of the 
Wesleys, saw clearly that the Methodist move- 
ment was in itself a direct contradiction of 
Church of Englandism, and must inevitably 
lead, unless thwarted at once, to the establish- 
ment of another church. He tried his best in 



41 Life of Samuel Walker of Truro, p. 224; Tyerman, vol. 
ii, p. 251. 

42 Ibid., p. 201; v l. ii, p. 245. 



130 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

correspondence with both John and Charles to 
stave off this result. In a letter to Charles, 
dated August 16, 1756, Walker, after speaking 
of his great concern over this matter, says: 

Lay preachers, being contrary to the constitution of the 
Church of England, are, as far as that point goes, a separa- 
tion from it. It is quite another question whether lay 
preachers be agreeable to the appointment of the Spirit 
respecting the ministry. The matter is not whether lay 
preachers be needful, or what their calling may be. Be 
the one or the other as it will, the thing is plainly incon- 
sistent with the discipline of the Church of England; and 
so in one essential point, setting up a church within her 
which cannot be of her. When, therefore, it is asked, 
Shall we separate from the Church of England? it should 
rather be asked, Shall we make the separation we have 
begun a separation in all forms? And if we do not think 
ourselves allowed to do this, shall we unite with her? 
We do not, unless lay preaching is laid aside. 

Yourselves must judge the call and necessity of lay 
preachers and whether that, or anything beside, may 
justify a separation. Meantime there is a continual 
bar kept up between you and any regular clergyman, who 
cannot in conscience fall in with this measure. The 
most he can do is not to forbid them; he can not take them 
by the hand. And so there must be two disunited minis- 
trations of the Word in the same place, by people who 
yet do call themselves of the Church of England. 43 



43 Life of Samuel Walker, p. 207; Tyerman, vol. ii, pp. 
245, 246. 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 131 

This almost pathetic protest against Meth- 
odism, as John Wesley was carrying it on, from 
one of the best and most devoted of the evan- 
gelical clergy is most instructive. It shows the 
embarrassment and confusion which these men 
felt toward a movement for whose spiritual side 
they had profound sympathy, but toward 
whose ecclesiastical side they had profound 
distrust. They did not and perhaps could not 
see that one side was direct counterpart to the 
other. They longed to remain on friendly 
terms with the movement, but how could they 
do that and yet remain true and consistent 
churchmen? Walker in his letter submitted a 
plan for the solution of the difficulty, which was, 
in short, this : Let the best of the lay preachers 
be ordained, to which he believed the archbishop 
would consent, and let the others settle down 
as class-leaders or lay deacons. To bring 
Methodism in harmony with the church, both 
lay preaching and the itinerancy must be utterly 
abolished. How our best calculations and 
opinions are sometimes overturned by events is 
amusingly illustrated in two prophecies in this 
letter of Walker's. "I remember, when it 
[Methodism] first began I said and thought that 
lay preaching would be the ruin of Methodism." 



132 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

The lay preachers "will break out (and form a 
separate Church) at last, nor can anything less 
be expected at your brother's death, which is 
an event of no great distance, in all human 
appearances/ 5 Lay preaching was the salva- 
tion of Methodism, and Wesley lived thirty-five 
years after this. 

Some of the preachers, to save themselves 
from persecution, had taken out licenses from 
the magistrates, an act which entered them as 
Dissenters, and which Wesley approved, but 
which made Charles Wesley furious. Grimshaw, 
rector of Haworth, a stanch friend to the 
Wesleys, wrote, in 1760, that from henceforth 
he could have nothing to do with the Meth- 
odists. 

"The Methodists are no longer members of 
the Church of England. They are as real a 
body of Dissenters from her as the Presby- 
terians, Baptists, Quakers, or any body of In- 
dependents. ... I hereby, therefore, assure you 
that I disclaim all further and future connection 
with the Methodists. I will quietly recede, 
without noise or tumult. 55 The licensing of 
preachers and preaching houses "has been 
gradually growing ever since erecting preaching 
houses was first encouraged in the land; and if 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 133 

you [he is writing to Charles] can stem the 
torrent, it will only be during your lives. As 
soon as you are dead all the preachers will then 
do as many have already done. Dissenters the 
Methodists will all shortly be; it cannot, I am 
fully satisfied, be prevented." 44 

It will be seen, therefore, that the deliberate 
judgment of Wesley's contemporaries, even of 
those who stood in friendly relations to him, 
was that his movement was direct violation of 
the constitution of the Church of England, that 
the Methodists were virtually Dissenters and 
would in time become openly such. But 
although these considerations were urged upon 
Wesley, he went onward in his gloriously incon- 
sistent course, sending out new lay preachers 
every year, eventually ordaining some of them, 
and calmly leaving results in the hands of God. 

Over against this whole tendency of Meth- 
odism under Wesley's hand, a tendency all the 
time away from the Church of England, not to 
speak of High Church theories, and over against 
the testimonies of Wesley and of his contem- 
poraries, a striking sermon is brought forward. 
It is the famous Dathan and Abiram sermon of 



* 4 Jackson, Life of Charles Wesley y vol. ii, p. 191; Tyerman, 
vol. ii, p. 285. 



134 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

1789, and is his last effort to prevent the admin- 
istration of the sacraments by his unordained 
preachers. It was printed by Wesley in the 
Arminian Magazine in 1790, was not reprinted 
in Wesley's sermons after his death, but is 
included in the collected edition of Wesley's 
Works edited by Jackson, 1829-31, and in fol- 
lowing editions. The text is: "No man taketh 
this honor unto himself, but he that is called 
of God, as was Aaron" (Heb. 5. 4). Wesley 
says there is a difference between a priest, a 
prophet, and a preacher. At the time of 
Moses God appointed a whole tribe as a priestly 
tribe, Levi. They only could be priests. But 
prophets could be taken from any tribe. In 
the New Testament the prophets were usually 
called scribes. Our Lord built the church on 
the plan of the Jewish. There were apostles 
and evangelists to preach as missionaries, and 
pastors, preachers, and teachers to build up the 
faith of congregations already founded. The 
apostles and evangelists could preach, but they 
had no right to administer sacraments. This 
last belonged only to pastors or bishops. In 
the time of Constantine and after the office of 
evangelist (or apostle) and pastor (or bishop) 
became combined in one, in order that one man 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 135 

might "engross the whole pay." But still there 
remained a difference, so that among Roman 
Catholics, Church of England, and Presby- 
terians it is considered that an evangelist or 
teacher is not necessarily the same as pastor, to 
whom alone belongs the administration of the 
sacraments. But you say, Methodists are 
different. Well, in a way they are. Two 
young men went out to "sow the word of God 
by the wayside." They advised all who joined 
their societies "not to leave their former con- 
gregation, but only their sins." "The Church- 
men might go to Church still, the Presby- 
terian, Anabaptist, Quaker, might still retain 
their own opinions, and attend their own con- 
gregations." The only condition was "having 
a real desire to flee from the wrath to come." 
After that we accepted lay preachers: first, 
Maxwell, then Richards, then Westell — but only 
as preachers, not to administer sacraments, 
which is an entirely different office. In 1744 
we had our first Conference. In that Confer- 
ence the preachers did not dream they had a 
right to administer sacraments. The question, 
"In what light are we to consider ourselves?" 
was answered, "As extraordinary messengers 
raised up to provoke the ordinary ones to 



136 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

jealousy." One of our first rules for a preacher 
was, To do that part of the work to which we 
appoint. What was that? "To administer 
sacraments? To exercise the priestly office?" 
"Such a design never entered our mind." If a 
preacher had taken such a step, he would have 
ceased by that fact to belong to us. We 
Methodists are a new thing in history. Other 
leaders formed a party or sect. We do not. 
Our members can belong to any church they 
wish, and we can do nothing to separate from 
their church those who have been members of 
the Church of England. How I stand is this: 
I hold the doctrines of the Church of England. 
[Wesley persuaded himself that the peculiar 
doctrines of Methodism were in harmony with 
the teaching of the church. Some of them 
were; others were not; most were out harmony 
with the spirit and general trend of that church.] 
I love her liturgy. [Wesley was sincere in this, 
though the liturgy was not used in most of his 
services.] I approve her plan of discipline. 
[He had formerly said — see above — that he did 
not like many of her canons and laws.] I vary 
from the church only when necessary. (1) I 
preach abroad [in the open]. (2) I pray extem- 
pore. (3) I unite the flock into little companies 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 137 

to provoke one another to love and good works. 
(4) I meet the preachers, or the greater part, 
once a year, that we may assist each other and 
save our souls and those that hear us. (5) In 
those Conferences we fix the stations of the 
preachers for the ensuing year. But this is not 
separating from the church. I attend the 
service myself, when I have opportunity and 
advise our societies to do. I did allow the 
Methodists in Dublin to have services in 
church hours, but that was an exceptional case 
for special reasons. I beseech our preachers 
to remember that we were first called in the 
Church of England ; do not leave it. "Be Church 
of England men still." But "Methodists them- 
selves are of no particular sect or party; they 
receive those of all parties who endeavor to do 
justly and love mercy and walk humbly with 
their God." 45 

This is the famous sermon of which our High 
Church brethren make so much. I do not 
blame them for rolling it under their tongue as 
a sweet morsel. It shows the conservatism of 
Wesley, as well as his radicalism, his conserva- 
tism in keeping his old love for the church of 
his youth and striving to keep his preachers and 

« Works, vol. vii, p. 275-281 (serm. 115). 



138 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

members in as close touch with it as he could, 
and his radicalism in ruthlessly departing from 
it wherever he thought necessary and actually 
having no more reference to it in the main part 
of his work than though it was in the moon. 
I find the following bit of history in Henry 
Moore's Life of Wesley, vol. ii, p. 339, New 
York ed. : 

I was with Mr. Wesley in London when he published 
that sermon. He encouraged me to be a man of one 
book; and he had repeatedly invited me to speak fully 
whatever objection I had to anything which he spoke or 
published. I thought that some things in that discourse 
were not to be found in The Book; and I resolved to tell 
him so the first opportunity. It soon occurred. I re- 
spectfully observed that I agreed with him that the Lord 
had always sent by whom he would send, instructions, 
reproof, and correction in righteousness to mankind, and 
that there was a real distinction between the prophetic 
and priestly office in the Old Testament, and the prophetic 
and pastoral office in the New, where no priesthood is 
mentioned but that of the Lord. But I could not think 
that what he had said concerning evangelists and pastors 
was agreeable to what we read there, viz., that the latter 
had a right to administer the sacraments which the former 
did not possess. I observed, "Sir, you know that the 
evangelists Timothy and Titus were ordered by the 
apostles to ordain bishops [that is, elders; Moore is using 
the Authorized Version of course; what they were really 
asked to do was to appoint elders] in every place; and they 



THEOLOGIAN, CHURCHMAN 139 

surely could not impart to them an authority which they 
did not themselves possess." He looked earnestly at me 
for some time, but not with displeasure. He made no 
reply, and soon introduced another subject. I said no 
more. The man of one book would not dispute against it. 
I believe, he saw (that) his love to the Church from which 
he never deviated unnecessarily, had in this instance, led 
him a little too far. 

I should think it had. Wesley's distinction 
between apostles or evangelists and pastors or 
bishops as to the administration of the sacra- 
ments in New Testament times was completely 
astray. There was no such distinction. And 
his carrying back the ordained Christian min- 
istry to the Aaronic or Old Testament priest- 
hood was the most barefaced fiction (of course 
not intentionally on his part), resting on no 
historical or theological grounds whatever, and 
was, in fact, inconsistent with all of his own 
higher and better ideas and teachings. No 
wonder that Moore told him his sermon was 
against the New Testament, and he had the 
nobleness and candor not to defend it. He 
never reprinted the sermon. Of course, Wes- 
ley was true in saying that it has been a matter 
of order in all churches Catholic and Protestant 
for unordained men not to administer the 
sacraments; and if he had been content to place 



140 WESLEY AS SOCIOLOGIST 

the matter on the simple platform of fact and 
of expediency, it would have been sufficient for 
his purpose. But to go further led him open 
to reply from those who saw how things were 
in the New Testament. And from the stand- 
point of our present-day knowledge of the New 
Testament and of early Christian history, that 
reply could be made far more convincing and 
extensive than Moore made it. 

From a study of all the facts, it is readily 
seen that it is impossible to form a consistent 
picture of Wesley's churchmanship. It is 
crossed through and through with contradic- 
tions. His feelings, early training, all his asso- 
ciations, his prejudices, some of his principles, 
led him to warm regard for the church of his 
father and mother. The whole drift of his life 
after 1738 and all the crucial steps of his move- 
ment led him in effect to radical separation from 
it, accompanied at times with stern denuncia- 
tion of it, and a formal repudiation of all its 
laws except the rubrics in its ritual, which also 
were thrown to the winds in his ordinations. 
These last are so well known that they are not 
gone into here. 



APPENDIX I 

The Erasmus- Wesley Ordination Story 

In 1763 Bishop Erasmus, of Crete, of the 
Greek Church, visited England, and at the re- 
quest of Wesley ordained as presbyter John 
Jones, an able and learned preacher of Wes- 
ley's band. It seems also that Samson Stani- 
forth and Thomas Bryant were also ordained 
by Erasmus, but whether at Wesley's request, 
we do not know. Eight years after (1771) 
Augustus Toplady published a Letter to Wesley 
in which he made the insinuation in the way 
of a question that Wesley requested Erasmus to 
ordain him (Wesley) a bishop. But Toplady 
also implies that Erasmus refused. Toplady's 
words are: 

"Did you not strongly press this supposed Greek bishop 
to consecrate you a bishop that you might be invested with 
the power of ordaining what ministers you pleased to 
officiate in your societies as clergymen? And did he not 
refuse to consecrate you, alleging this for his reason, — 
That according to the canon of the Greek Church more 
than one bishop must be present to assist at the consecra- 
tion of a new one?" 

Immediately an intimate friend of Wesley's 

141 



142 APPENDIX I 

and one of his preachers, Thomas Olivers, 
replied to the Letter of Toplady 's in which 
he (Olivers) said that Wesley authorized him 
to give the most positive and unqualified 
denial to the insinuation that he had asked 
Erasmus to ordain him a bishop. 

These are the facts in the case. Notice: 

1. Toplady does not say that Erasmus or- 
dained Wesley, but only that he asked him, 
and he says this in the way of a question or 
insinuation. 

2. Wesley gives a categorical denial to the 
insinuation that he asked Erasmus to ordain 
him. Would Erasmus ordain him without 
being asked, or force ordination upon him? 

3. Even Toplady acknowledges that Wesley 
was not ordained by Erasmus. 

4. Wesley was already convinced that there 
were only two orders in the ancient church — 
presbyters and deacons — and he believed him- 
self a scriptural bishop. Would he be likely 
to seek a third order from Erasmus? 

5. On the ground that he was a scriptural 
bishop he subsequently ordained presbyters for 
Scotland, America, and England. He never 
alleges any ordination by Erasmus for those 
ordinations, but only the providential exigencies 



APPENDIX I 143 

of the work and his providential place as the 
head of the movement and the fact that he 
is a scriptural bishop (presbyter). 

6. Those ordinations were a bitter pill to 
his brother Charles and to his other Episcopal 
friends. But to allay their anxieties he never 
refers them to any ordination to the Episcopate 
by a Greek bishop. To overcome their diffi- 
culties an ounce of Erasmus would have been 
worth a pound of Scripture and Providence. 

7. There is not a scintilla of contemporary 
evidence that Erasmus ordained Wesley. 

8. AH the probabilities in the case, Wesley's 
character, position, etc., look the other way. 
Wesley's attitude toward his own mission 
as the providential leader in an evangelistic 
movement, his conviction that God had raised 
him up for that and endowed him with all 
faculties for carrying it forward, make it im- 
probable that he would have sought ordination 
to the Episcopate from a Greek bishop. He 
always claimed that he was as really a bishop 
as any bishop in England. He never ordained 
unless it was necessary, but when it was he 
did not hesitate to do it. For those reasons 
we may dismiss the story of Wesley's ordina- 
tion by Erasmus as a myth. 



144 APPENDIX I 

Dr. Phoebus claims that after 1763 Wesley 
assumed a more autocratic style in governing 
the societies, gathered the reins more in his 
own hands, and did other things which are 
explained by a possible ordination to the 
episcopate. But all these things are explained 
by the development of the work. Besides, it 
is unlikely that a Greek bishop would ordain 
to the episcopate a man in the service or 
under the wing of the Church of England. The 
comity of the so-called Catholic Churches 
would forbid. It is also a canon of the Greek 
Church that three bishops must ordain to 
episcopate, and it is not likely that Erasmus 
would disregard such a canon. The Greek 
Church is strict in its adherence to rules of 
this kind. 

Dr. Phoebus publishes a letter by an Epis- 
copal clergyman, Samuel Peters, dated May 11, 
1809, in which he (Peters) says he is con- 
vinced that Wesley was ordained by Erasmus, 
and says also that Seabury, Episcopal bishop- 
elect, applied to Wesley for ordination on the 
ground of such consecration by Erasmus. I 
have reason for believing the letter is either 
a forgery, or it is another illustration of Samuel 
Peters's vivid imagination, of which the first 



APPENDIX I 145 

was his book on the History of Connecticut, 
a book of exaggerations and lies. 

As to the literature of this Greek bishop story 
Tyerman gives all the facts in his Life of Wesley, 
vol. ii, pp. 485-489. Dr. G. A. Phoebus has 
an article in the Methodist Quarterly Review, 
January, 1878, pp. 88-111, and the editor has 
a note in the same number, pp. 195, 196, 
traversing the conclusion of Dr. Phoebus. 
Bishop R. J. Cooke (formerly professor of 
church history in Chattanooga University) has 
an excellent chapter on the same subject in 
his Historic Episcopate, pp. 139-155. That 
the High Churchman Seabury should apply 
to Wesley for ordination is almost as un- 
thinkable as that he should apply to the 
Sultan. Even the rumor that he intended 
to apply to the Lutheran Church in Denmark 
in case he failed in England is rejected by his 
biographer, Dr. Beardsley (Life and Corre- 
spondence of Samuel Seabury, Boston, 1880, 
3rd ed., 1882, p. 134), as without a particle of 
evidence in his letters and papers. In fact, 
Seabury says himself in August, 1785: "The 
plea of the Methodists is something like im- 
pudence. Mr. Wesley is only a Presbyter, and 
all his Ordinations Presbyterian, and in direct 



146 APPENDIX I 

opposition to the Church of England: And 
they can have no pretense for calling them- 
selves Churchmen till they return to the unity 
of the Church, which they have unreasonably, 
unnecessarily, and wickedly broken, by their 
separation and schism" (Beardsley, p. 230). 



APPENDIX II 

Letter on the "Separation" of the Meth- 
odists from the Church of England 

[A Columbia University student had made 
his Ph.D. thesis on "Separation of Methodists 
from the Established Church." This letter 
was written after reading his manuscript.] 

. . . There was a sense in which Wesley's and 
the later doings were a kind of separation from 
the church, but the word "separation" brings 
up a false notion, namely, that Methodism was 
once united to the Church of England. How 
could it separate unless it was once a part of 
the church? Whereas it was never a part of 
that church. Here is the historical situation. 

A couple of brothers, who happened to be 
Anglican ministers, went out to bring sin- 
ners to repentance. They succeeded. The 
converts they organized into societies to 
whom they occasionally gave the Supper 
in their own Methodist meetinghouses (itself 
an irregularity if not a violation of order). 
Lay preachers were sent out for the same 
evangelistic work. These were not allowed to 

147 



148 APPENDIX II 

administer, and the people were urged to go 
to the churches to receive the Supper. Some 
of them did, some did not. Those who did not 
were not disciplined. (Wesley sometimes spoke 
of expelling those who did not go to parish 
churches, but do we ever read that he actually 
expelled them?) Sometimes the ministers wel- 
comed the Methodists to communion, some- 
times they repelled them. The Methodists 
were not enrolled as Anglican members except 
in the sense in which all English people who 
were baptized in infancy and confirmed were 
enrolled. The ministers, except those half 
dozen who were sympathetic to the movement, 
did not look upon the Methodists as belonging 
to them. The bishops in England took no 
notice of Methodism except to condemn it. 
An Irish bishop ordained a preacher or two, 
but that did not mean that he fathered Meth- 
odism or looked upon it as a part of his church. 
Wesley's words of exhortation to his followers 
to keep in with the church — though absolutely 
sincere — were words only, for all his decisive 
actions were against his words. (1) He licensed 
and sent out lay preachers to do a work entirely 
independent of the church, which was a whole- 
sale violation of all church order and in itself a 



APPENDIX II 149 

separation from the church. (2) He and his 
preachers invaded every parish in England 
(speaking generally), which was also an outrage 
on the church, and besides a specific violation of 
his ordination vows. (3) He organized his 
followers into societies (really churches accord- 
ing to the New Testament), placed over them 
pastors and preachers, and all this new eccle- 
siastical life essentially went on without any 
more care for the Church of England than if 
that church were in the moon. If the Church 
of England had had any self-respect in the 
eighteenth century, she would have thrown 
Wesley out in quick meter. She cared for none 
of these things, and though her bishops de- 
nounced him and his movement they did not 
care enough for church order to discipline him, 
r as the bishop of St. Alban's (Dr. Jacob) did the 
Rev. F. C. Fillingham, for joining in a non-Epis- 
copal ordination in 1905. How could Meth- 
odists leave a church of which they were never 
an essential part, except that some of them went 
to the parish chapel to receive the Supper, just 
as a member of the Sons of Temperance or 
Good Templars might? Nor did the acts of 
the Conferences after Wesley's death change 
the matter. Unto this day it is and always has 



150 APPENDIX II 

been the custom of some Methodists in Eng- 
land to go to the parish church to worship and 
receive the sacrament, and that fact makes the 
Methodists no more a part of the Anglican 
body now than it did in Wesley's prime. 

As to the Nonconformists, they were received 
into Methodism on the same basis as Anglicans, 
and they were expected to go to their own 
churches for worship and communion, and they 
did. Far from being a society of Anglicanism, 
Wesley boasted over and over again that his 
movement was for all, that no sectarian tests 
were made, that all were welcome to join on the 
same conditions. And they did all join on the 
same conditions. The reason the Nonconform- 
ist historians do not pay much .attention to 
Methodists in the eighteenth century is not that 
Methodism was an Anglican movement, but 
because their own churches were recruited by 
confessions of faith, not by baptism and con- 
firmation, and therefore the general run of sin- 
ners in England were Anglicans and not Dis- 
senters. Comparatively few of the latter could 
in the nature of the case be converted by the 
Methodists, and the majority of those that 
were probably joined their own churches. 
Besides, the controversy on prelacy and the 



APPENDIX II 151 

persecution of Dissenters by Anglicans in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had some- 
what embittered the former, and therefore they 
would naturally ignore a movement led by a 
minister of the latter. 

I must feel, therefore, that while individual 
Methodists did and do belong to the Church of 
England, it is unhistorical to use the word 
"separation" of a movement and of people in it 
who were never as such a part of that church, 
and calls up ideas which dislocate the actual 
relations, and puts the reader on a false scent. 



APPENDIX III 

THE REV. ARTHUR W. LITTLE ON 
COKE'S ORDINATION 

On the morning of November 23, 1905, after 
chapel in Drew Theological Seminary, the la- 
mented Professor Olin A. Curtis, by whose 
side I sat on the platform, handed me a clipping 
from the Chicago Record-Herald, November 14, 
1905, which said: 

Rev. Dr. Arthur W. Little, rector of St. Mark's Epis- 
copal Church, Evanston, has written a little book on 
"The Times and the Teaching of John Wesley," in which 
he aims to show, not only that Wesley was a stanch 
churchman to the day of his death, but that Methodism 
is a spurious offshoot of the old Catholic and Apostolic 
Church. Methodists need not be utterly downcast, how- 
ever, for Dr. Little assures them that "there is a light in 
the church's window and a loving welcome within." He 
writes from the "High-Church" viewpoint, and the pith 
of his book is found in the chapter in which he attacks 
the "so-called ordination" of Dr. Coke as the first Meth- 
odist bishop. This act of Wesley is designated as "the 
saddest, most inconsistent, most culpable, most fatal 
blunder of this zealous and godly man." In the author's 
opinion Dr. Coke was "an ambitious, vacillating priest, 
whose allegiance to the church sat lightly upon him," 

152 



APPENDIX III 153 

and who overpersuaded Wesley to perform "what ap- 
pears to have been the sacrilege of a mock and schismatic 
ordination." He insists that Wesley never intended to 
make Coke a bishop, supporting this position with nu- 
merous quotations from Wesley's later utterances, which, 
he holds, have been misrepresented and suppressed. 

I understand that Dr. Little has condensed the results 
of years of study into this small volume, and that he has 
drawn much of his material from the Wesleyana in the 
library of the Northwestern University. His literary 
style is cogent and forceful. Comment on his spirit and 
argument may safely be left to the Methodist brethren. 
(Published by the Young Churchman Company, Mil- 
waukee, Wis.) 

That is certainly interesting. It came to me 
that it was time for someone to make a careful, 
scientific, impartial study of Wesley's church- 
manship, for only thus could his ordination of 
Coke be understood. No one in America has 
ever made that study. Various Protestant 
Episcopal and Methodist writers have assailed 
or defended Wesley for this or that, but no one 
has yet traced the evolution of Wesley's mind 
in the light of his history and the history of his 
movement in regard to the matter treated by 
the Evanston parson, whose life later came to 
a tragic end. In fact, our Protestant Episcopal 
brethren have carried on for many years an 
aggressive propaganda in books, pamphlets, and 



154 APPENDIX III 

tracts on Wesley as a Churchman for proselytes 
from Methodist churches. Wesley's ordination 
of Coke as superintendent came as the natural 
climax of a lifelong adjustment to historical 
necessities, and was the beginning of other 
ordinations; it can be understood, therefore, 
only in connection with the actual development. 
The ordination of Coke (September 2, 1784) 
is so well known that I have not treated it in 
this book. But when the development I have 
just spoken of is understood, it will be seen 
that the Anglican judgment of that ordination 
as the "saddest, most inconsistent, most cul- 
pable, most fatal blunder of this zealous and 
godly man" is as absurd as it is false. From 
the High-Church standpoint the following were 
more "culpable and fatal blunders," because 
more fundamental, carrying the ordination 
"blunder" in their roots. (1) Wesley's deter- 
mination to obey his bishops only just as far as 
he thought best. (2) His disregard of the whole 
prayer book, except to certain rubrics. (3) His 
determination to invade — if it came in his way 
— every parish in England with independent 
public worship over which bishops had no more 
control than they had over the canals in Mars; 
and this in spite of the pledge he had given in 



APPENDIX III 155 

his ordination to officiate in those parishes only 
where permitted by the bishop. Wesley de- 
fended his free-lance methods by the argument 
that as Fellow of a college he was not under 
any bishop. But this was only an excuse. 
Wesley resigned his fellowship in 1751, and it 
was evidently not intended that a Fellow was 
the only Anglican minister free from decent 
respect to authority. At least to a Catholic 
or High Churchman such an excuse would have 
been abhorrent. The real reason why Wesley 
went everywhere without regard to bishops was 
the same reason which explains and justifies 
all his departures, namely, because he felt provi- 
dentially called to a work of world-wide evan- 
gelization out of the ordinary channels, a work 
which would have been made abortive by respect 
to the rules of his church . (4) His employment 
of lay preachers on a scale never before even 
dreamt of in the history of the church. Though 
in Catholic theory it is not a clerical function to 
address a congregation, and there was, there- 
fore, nothing anti-ecclesiastical in this de- 
parture of Wesley's, looking deeper it was an 
insult to his church. For no layman can 
officiate thus without a special permit of the 
bishop, and permits are granted only rarely. 



156 APPENDIX m 

But here were scores of laymen let loose all 
over Great Britain and Ireland with formal 
authorization from Wesley, who in all respects 
except administering sacraments acted as clergy- 
men, and who according to the New Testament 
conception of ordination were really ordained 
ministers. And yet Wesley's church had no 
jurisdiction over this host of half -ministers ! 
How paltry the setting apart in Wesley's age 
of Coke to superintend the societies in America 
with Asbury in comparison with these four 
tremendous clefts in church order which "this 
zealous and godly man" had been making for 
nearly fifty years! O no! The "fatal blunder," 
the "most culpable" act of Wesley in his 
breaches of churchmanship, was not the ordina- 
tion of Coke or of anyone else (and he ordained 
several), but was when, in those far distant 
years after 1738, he allowed that wind which 
bloweth where it listeth, and of which ye hear 
the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it 
cometh or whither it goeth — when he allowed 
the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow away his 
church loyalty. (5) For many years Charles 
Wesley had his own Methodist chapel in Lon- 
don, of which he was regular pastor, regular 
under himself and John, but not under a bishop, 



APPENDIX III 157 

to which he administered the Lord's Supper as 
often as he liked. He held his services in 
church hours and went along as though there 
were no Church of England which alone gave 
him clerical standing and sacramental rights! 
John also administered the Sacrament in the 
Methodist chapels in London and elsewhere. 
Ah, the ordination of Coke, the quiet act of a 
few minutes before three or four people in a 
private chamber in the early gray of that 
September day, was hardly to be mentioned 
before these lifelong dramatic defiances of 
church order before the eyes of all the world, of 
which it was the climax (or, shall we say, the 
anti-climax?). And yet Charles was scandal- 
ized when he heard of the Coke incident! 
Human nature is queer, is it not? For half a 
century he had been part and parcel of a 
mighty movement which was building up a 
rival ecclesiasticism — for that is what it really 
was — to his church, of which the world fur- 
nished and furnishes no equal! And now he 
feels the Coke matter as a bitter pill! 

As to Coke being an "ambitious, vacillating 
priest, whose allegiance to the church sat 
lightly upon him," this little book is not 
about him. If the reader wants to know if 



158 APPENDIX III 

this judgment is just, let him read the Life of 
Coke by Drew (1818) and especially by Eth- 
eridge (1860), and he will find all the facts. 
Coke was ambitious, but in no selfish sense. 
He had regard to ecclesiastical honors, and 
made that famous proposition to Bishop White 
in 1791 to unite the Methodists more or less 
with the Protestant Episcopalians, which 
brought down upon him the rebuke of Asbury 
and the Conference of 1808, who made the 
little restless Doctor eat humble pie. But 
there was nothing dishonorable or disloyal in 
any sense or to any party in his proposition; 
and if there was indiscretion, Coke made the 
amende honorable in noble style. He was not 
vacillating in the sense intended, but kept up 
his work in connection with Wesley and the 
Conference with fidelity and consecration till 
the end. He did not leave his curacy for Wes- 
ley, but was thrown out of it on account of his 
piety and earnestness, and when he joined 
Wesley's movement he did so as still a Church 
of England man. In fact, from the Methodist 
point of view the trouble with Coke was his 
over-loyalty to his church. In 1799, in a letter 
to the bishop of London, he proposed ordina- 
tion of the best Methodist preachers in Eng- 



APPENDIX III 159 

land by the bishops so that "every deviation 
from the Church of England might be done 
away." l We know from our sources that both 
Wesley and Coke wanted a closer approximation 
of the Church of England in the new adjust- 
ments he was sent over here to make in 1784, 
but they both reckoned "without their host" — 
the iron will of Asbury, who completely mas- 
tered the little envoy, probably destroyed the 
"sketch" that Wesley sent over, and arranged 
matters through the socalled Christmas Con- 
ference as to him seemed best for the work. 

Nor is it true that Coke "overpersuaded 
Wesley to perform" the ordination of 1784. 
All the important steps in Wesley's movements 
which were departures from his church were 
adopted reluctantly but deliberately, and when 
once adopted were never recalled nor apolo- 
gized for, but were taken as providential ar- 
rangements as with a kind of divine finality. 
This is true of even the only serious blunder he 
ever made (outside of the appalling misstep of 
his sudden marriage), the huge mistake of the 
arbitrarily selected Legal Hundred. Was Meph- 
istopheles at his elbow then? He had been 
repeatedly asked to provide in some way for 

1 See this correspondence in Etheridge, Chap. xx. 



160 APPENDIX III 

the American societies, and had been revolving 
the matter. He finally thought out a plan and 
mentioned it to the one chiefly involved, Coke, 
between whom and Wesley there were always 
cordial relations. Coke apparently told the 
history to his friend and later biographer, the 
metaphysician shoemaker Samuel Drew, one of 
the many minds whom the movement stirred, 
who tells the story as follows: 

In February, 1784, Wesley called Coke into his study 
in City Road, London, and spoke to him in substance as 
follows: As the Revolution in America had separated 
the colonies from the mother country forever and the 
Episcopal establishment was utterly abolished, the socie- 
ties had been represented to him as in a most deplorable 
condition; that an appeal had been made through Mr. 
Asbury, in which he requested him to provide some mode 
of church government suited to their exigencies; and 
that having long and seriously revolved the subject in 
his thoughts he had intended to adopt the plan which 
he was now about to unfold; that as he had invariably 
endeavored in every step he had taken to keep as closely 
to the Bible as possible, so in the present decision he 
hoped he was not to deviate from it; that in keeping his 
eye upon the primitive churches in the ages of unadul- 
terated Christianity he had much admired the mode of 
ordaining bishops which the church of Alexandria had 
practiced (to preserve its purity that church would never 
suffer the interference of a foreign bishop in any of their 
ordinations; but the presbyters on the death of a bishop 



APPENDIX ni 161 

exercised the right of ordaining another from their own 
body; and this practice continued among them for two 
hundred years, till the days of Dionysius); and finally, 
that being himself a presbyter, he wished Dr. Coke to 
accept ordination at his hands, and to proceed in that 
character to the continent of America to superintend the 
societies in the United States. 2 

There is an oft-repeated Anglican legend that 
Coke was behind the 1784 ordinations. This is 
false, but like many legends there is a grain of 
truth in it, and that truth is this: Coke did not 
accede at first to Wesley's proposition. He 
asked for time to study the subject as to 
whether presbyters could advance one to a 
higher office of superintendent. He looked up 
the matter in Scripture and the Fathers, and 
after two months wrote to Wesley that he 
could concur. The next step was Wesley's 
laying the American matter before the Annual 
Conference in Leeds, July, 1784, and receiving 
concurrence, which, of course, was merely gen- 
eral, as legally Wesley was the Conference. 
Nor do we know what Wesley laid before the 
brethren, as the Minutes mention nothing of 
this, and it was probably only some indefinite 

2 Drew, Life Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D. N. Y. ed. 1818, 
pp. 63, 64. 



162 APPENDIX III 

scheme of giving them the sacraments. Here 
Coke steps in and becomes a decisive factor in 
the form the scheme took. Coke was afraid of 
not being received by Asbury, and was there- 
fore anxious for all the influence he could get 
from Wesley. So in the interval between the 
Conference and the ordination he wrote a 
strong letter to Wesley, urging that his (Coke's) 
power of ordaining the preachers in America 
should be received from Wesley himself through 
the imposition of hands, by "an authority 
formally received from you," that he lay hands 
on Whatcoat and Vasey so that Coke may 
have two presbyters in America to assist him 
to ordain, that, according to Fletcher's advice, 
Wesley give us letters testimonial of the dif- 
ferent offices with which you have invested us, 
and if the thing becomes known you must 
acknowledge that I acted under your direc- 
tion. 3 It would appear from this letter that 
Wesley had intended to set apart Coke or 
have him set apart to the office of oversight or 
superintendency in America for the purpose of 
supplying the sacraments, but not by formal 

3 See this letter in Smith, History of Wesleyan Methodism, 
London, 1857, i, 541-543, and in Etheridge, Life of Coke, 
Chap. iv. 



APPENDIX III 163 

ordination in the laying on of hands followed 
by formal authorization, and that this part of 
his program (with the laying on of hands on 
Whatcoat and Vasey to make them elders) 
was suggested by Coke. This explains also the 
remark of Wesley's friend, Alexander Knox, 
that Coke told him that "Dr. Coke urged Mr. 
Wesley to this procedure." 4 Nor is the excuse 
alleged for Wesley by some Anglicans that he 
was now in his dotage and so allowed himself 
to be led any truer than the charge just con- 
sidered. On the contrary, Wesley was as 
bright in mind and apparently almost as strong 
in body as when he began his movement forty- 
six years before. 5 

The ordination of Coke is called a "mock" 
one, but the same objector calls the ordainer a 
"zealous and godly man." Both cannot be 
true. If Wesley was a godly man, then he was 
a reverential man. In fact, reverence for 
sacred rites, for order and propriety, for God 
and everything pertaining to God, was in- 

4 Knox, Remarks on the Life and Character of John Wesley, 
appended to Southey, Life of Wesley and Rise and Progress of 
Methodism, ed. by C. C. Southey, 2d American ed. by Curry, 
1847 055), ii, 359. 

5 See the remarkable letter to Barry written as late as Feb- 
ruary, 1785, quoted by Etheridge, in appendix, note IX. 



164 APPENDIX III 

grained in the very texture of his soul. Wesley 
set apart Coke in all seriousness to meet an 
emergency in the progress of the Kingdom, 
and he had for it historical and religious rea- 
sons well worked out. (1) On the ground of 
the study of the New Testament and early 
church history he came to believe that presby- 
ters and bishops were the same order, though 
they might be different in office. That meant 
that essentially he was a bishop. In case of 
providential urgency, therefore, he might be 
compelled to use his right of ordinations. 
(2) He believed that for a century and more 
the presbyters in Alexandria consecrated their 
bishop, and that the bishop so constituted was 
received as perfectly valid throughout Chris- 
tendom. (3) He believed that he himself was 
an extraordinary messenger sent by God — not 
miraculously or by prophetic call in the biblical 
sense — in the ways of providence to do the 
work that he was doing for the world, and as 
such it was his duty to carry on and consoli- 
date the work. Answer as you will the ques- 
tion of the expediency or right of Wesley to 
act as he did in 1784, there is absolutely no 
doubt that he was certain that every important 
step in his movement — and especially this one 



APPENDIX III 165 

— was dictated, not only by providential lead- 
ing, but by large and sound reasons. 

The ordination is called "schismatic/ ' That 
is the pathos in the Wesley situation: almost 
superstitiously loyal to the Church of England, 
compelling his people to meet in unearthly 
hours so as not to take them away from the 
regular services of the church, urging them to 
attend faithfully those services and threatening 
them if they did not, etc., he was yet in all 
larger and permanent ways unconsciously set- 
ting at naught all his loyalties and building up 
an aggressive and closely-knit rival ecclesias- 
ticism, and persisting in this event when his 
attention was called to it by his friends in the 
Establishment. And so here this pathetic 
irony still clung to Wesley: the Church of 
England in America dissolved so far as effec- 
tive organization was concerned, no bishop 
there to ordain, the bishops in England refusing 
to ordain for Wesley, his converts in America 
clamoring for the sacraments, good order re- 
quiring that they should receive them from 
ordained men, impossible to receive them from 
Anglicans for various reasons — among others 
that over vast tracts there were none; and 
now he meets this dire necessity in harmony 



166 APPENDIX III 

with the evolution of his whole work and of 
his whole career by himself — according to an- 
cient Alexandrian precedents whose validity 
was undoubted — setting apart with canonical 
assistance of two presbyters a superintendent 
to set apart others in America for sacramental 
service for his people, so that they may, as he 
says himself, "still adhere to the doctrine and 
discipline of the Church of England," and yet 
really and unintentionally by that very act 
forming a new church with no more relation 
henceforth to the Church of England than with 
the Buddhist Church of Ceylon! Schismatic? 
Yes, in the sense that Wesley as an Anglican 
elder had no right to ordain to the office of 
overseer ( = bishop), though for nearly half a 
century he had been doing hundreds of things 
equally irregular; no, in the sense that Wesley 
believed that only by this step could a greater 
irregularity or evil, or whatever it might be 
called, be averted, namely, the total loss of the 
American Methodists to the Church of Eng- 
land. 

"He insists that Wesley never intended to 
make Coke a bishop, supporting this position 
with" quotations from Wesley. That is easy. 
Everybody knows Wesley's cutting letter to 



APPENDIX III 167 

Asbury rebuking him for taking the title of 
bishop. But Wesley was here as inconsistent 
as the Anglican exploiters of his churchman- 
ship. For if Wesley did not intend to make 
Coke a bishop (he was already a presbyter) 
he did not transgress any rules of his church. 
Why then damn him? But the only order left 
was that of overseer, or bishop, and that was 
the order necessary to do the work that Wesley 
wanted done in America, namely, ordain As- 
bury as deacon, elder, and bishop, so that he 
could ordain others, and thus the sacraments 
could be regularly administered. For this rea- 
son Wesley ordained ("set apart," but in his 
short-hand Diary he says "ordained") Coke as 
superintendent or bishop. The reason he did 
not use the usual ecclesiastical words "bishop" 
and "ordained" was that he did not wish to 
unnecessarily provoke — if I might so say— his 
church to jealousy and bring the hornets 
around his head. Besides, his ecclesiastical 
reverence forbade him to drag the old words 
out of their old associations. But that it was 
a real ordination and a real bishop the bitter 
expostulations of his brother Charles and other 
Anglican friends prove all too well. 

As to the literature of the topics discussed 



168 APPENDIX III 

in this book, I have preferred to work up the 
matter from Wesley's own writings, without 
much regard — except to the great Life by 
Tyerman — to other books. On Wesley as a 
Sociologist I am a pioneer, though a somewhat 
similar line is followed by Daniel D. Thompson 
{Wesley as a Social Reformer, Cincinnati, 1898), 
who made his Northwestern Christian Advocate 
such a powerful force for social betterment in 
those too brief years (1901-8) before his untime- 
ly and sudden taking off. I have written the 
study entirely independently of his book, 
though I refer to it once. This paper was 
printed in the London Quarterly Review, April, 
1908, and was immediately issued as a separate 
publication by the Wesleyan Methodist Pub- 
lishing House, London. I have to thank the 
kindness of the Book Steward of that Office or 
House, the Rev. J. Alfred Sharp, for permis- 
sion to use it here. It has been enlarged. I 
know of no monograph on Wesley's theology. 
The Germans on Luther far out-do us on 
Wesley. The three best books on the eccle- 
siastical significance of Wesley are, on the one 
hand, Hockin, John Wesley and Modern Meth- 
odism, 4th ed., 1887; Urlin, The Churchman's 
Life of Wesley, new ed., rev., 1886, and on the 



APPENDIX III 169 

other, Rigg, The Churchmanskip of John Wesley, 
1878, 2d ed., rev., 1886. Here again I desired 
to make a fresh study, and have had regard 
mainly to the sources. 



INDEX 

America, philosophy of history of, 9 
Atonement, 63; governmental theory, 64 

Baptismal regeneration, 91 

Bishops and presbyters one order, 106; distinct and yet 
distinction not essential, 106; no form of ecclesiasticism 
prescribed in Scripture, 108; Reformed Churches have valid 
succession, 109; apostolic succession (so-called) not valid, 
109, 110 

Calvinism, tolerated among his preachers, 42; Bible cannot 
teach, 51 

Christ, deity of, 38, 39, 40, 43, 58 

Church, doctrine of, 68 

Coke, Wesley's ordination of, 152 

Conferences, first on Church of England, 101; second Con- 
ference on, 102; third and fourth on, 106 

Conversion, influences of on his churchmanship, 85, 97 

Contemporaries, opinions of on Wesley's churchmanship, 124 

Depravity: see Sin 

Doctrinal tests of membership repudiated, 36, 77, 137; of 
ministers maintained, 79 

Earthquakes, God author of, 56 

England, Church of, so-called separation of Methodists from, 

114; 119ff., 136, 137, 147; moral condition of, 118, 121, 

122, 127 
Erasmus's alleged ordination of Wesley, 141 

171 



172 INDEX 

French Revolution, 8; Methodism prevented similar Revolu 
tion in England, 34 

Heathen, how saved, 55 
Hell, teaching on, 71 
Horses, 16; to be taxed, 17 

Inspiration; see Scripture 

Justification by faith, 39, 40, 41, 66 

Labor movements stimulated, 31 

Lay preaching, inconsistent with church, 123, 126, 128, 130, 
155; licensed, 132; will form a church, 132; not to ad- 
minister sacraments, 135 

Liberality in doctrine, 36, 84; see also Doctrinal tests, Tol- 
eration 

Liberty, political, 10 

Liquors distilling, 15; prohibition of, 17; denounced, 25 

Liturgy excellent but by no means perfect, 112 

Loan fund established, 31 

Luxury, American, 9; English, 17; forbidden, 27 

Methodists to be destroyed by riches, 24; doctrinal marks, 

37, 40 
Ministry, on New Testament idea of, 134; Wesley's opinion 

of criticized by Moore, 138; estimate of, 139 
Money, tainted, 26 
Monopoly opposed, 25 

Political power, origin of, 12 
Prayer, length of, tones in, 117 
Provisions, scarcity of, 15 
Punishment, see Hell 

Revolution, French, 8 



INDEX 173 

Riches, warning against, 22 

Roman Catholics, toleration of, 21; belong to the church, 69 

Scripture, inspiration of, 47 

Sin, original, defended, 43 

Slavery, opinion on, 27 

Supper, Lord's, 86; ritualistic observance at, 95 

Temperance reform, 18, 25, 29 

Tithe, 27 

Tobacco forbidden, 29; used later, 30 

Toleration, of Roman Catholics, 21; of diverse opinions, 52, 

53, 54; not of latitudinarianism, 55. See Doctrinal tests. 

Succession from Catholics valid, 105 
Trinity, 58; no theory of, 60; correct opinion of not necessary 

to piety, 61 

War denounced, 19 

Wesley, Charles, independent of church, 156 
Wesley, Samuel, opinion on church side of his brother's 
movement, 98 



imSHSSfn 0F CONGRESS 



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